Murphy's dream gig: Delivering Oscar speech

He does the same in his current comedy, “Norbit,” which opened as the No. 1 movie with $33.7 million last weekend. Murphy stars as mild-mannered Norbit, his grossly overweight wife and the Chinese orphanage owner who raised him.

The makers of “Norbit” hesitated over releasing the broad comedy in the middle of a potential Oscar campaign for Murphy, said director Brian Robbins, but Murphy wasn’t buying that.

“It was Eddie who said, ‘Hey, you know what? I love “Norbit.” It’s funny, it works. It’s good for me to not only do “Dreamgirls” but have “Norbit,” out there, too,”’ said Robbins, who also directs Murphy in his next flick, the sci-fi comedy “Starship Dave,” which begins shooting right after the Oscars.

“And look what he does in ‘Norbit.’ This is what this guy can do. It’s nice that he embraces both. He’s conscious enough to embrace his strengths.”

The depth Murphy displays in “Dreamgirls” should come as no surprise considering the versatility he has shown in comedy, colleagues say.

“He already should have gotten every award there is for just ‘The Klumps,”’ said Foxx, an Oscar winner for “Ray” who counts Murphy among his major influences. “Unfortunately, comedy’s not always looked upon as Oscar-worthy.

“But when you look at what he did in ‘Coming to America,’ you look at what he did in ‘Nutty Professor.’ The guy plays all these characters, and you actually believe these characters exist. And it’s just this one dude.”

Co-star Jennifer Hudson, the supporting-actress favorite for “Dreamgirls,” found Murphy an inspiring mentor for her debut film after rising to stardom on “American Idol.”

“Just watching Eddie was a lesson in itself,” Hudson said. “He’s very shy, very quiet, you barely know he’s in the room. But as soon as they would say, ‘Action,’ he would morph into this character, this person full of life, and it was just amazing to watch the transition.”

Murphy’s box-office duds usually come when he strays too far from the slick, streetwise hipster he built his career on. Audiences didn’t buy him as a bloodsucker in “Vampire in Brooklyn,” a TV evangelist in “Holy Man, a boxer-turned-agent in “I Spy” or a lunar nightclub owner in the sci-fi mega-bomb “The Adventures of Pluto Nash.”

Amid such failures, a strange thing happened to the once foul-mouthed comic of the stand-up specials “Delirious” and “Raw.” He transformed from an edgy Richard Pryor, one of his key influences, to an avuncular Bill Cosby, another of his early inspirations, becoming a staple of family-friendly comedies with “Doctor Dolittle,” “Daddy Day Care” and the “Shrek” cartoons.

For Murphy, it was just a matter of forgetting what didn’t work and trying something new.

“I’ve been rolling since I was 18. I’ve been chillin’,” Murphy told APTN. “Every now and then you might have a movie that’s wacky and don’t make some loot, but that ain’t the end of the world. You just keep it moving.”

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