Eddie Murphy's parenting rule is simple: no acting work until his kids turn 18. His daughter Bella Murphy is now explaining how strictly he enforced it.
The 24-year-old told People that she spent her childhood asking her father for even the smallest role. "I would always ask my dad, 'Can I please be an extra in this movie, please?' He'd always say, 'No,'" Bella told the outlet in a recent interview. The reason was his house rule: "We have a rule that we can't act or work until we're 18 in this industry, so he really wanted me to have a normal childhood, which I'm very appreciative of."
The ban backfired. Bella became more determined to act after watching him on set, seeing that he had "the coolest job ever" and wanting to follow him into the industry once she was old enough.
Her older sister Bria Murphy, 36, had already pursued acting first. "She wanted to be an actress before I did, and I was doing the younger sister, like 'I'm going to copy you,'" Bella explained. "And then it worked out. It was actually what I wanted to do, so that was cool."
Now that Bella is pursuing entertainment as The Roommates star, she is learning to trust herself. "That's been the big lesson overall with this, just trusting myself, and not getting in my head and psyching myself out about stuff," she said.
With 10 kids ranging from 7-year-old Max to 36-year-old Eric, Murphy has kept the same parenting approach across nearly three decades. "I've always been the same type of dad," he told CBS Mornings in July 2024. "I'm just laid back. I'm not the hard disciplinarian. I'm like a cool dad, but I don't let them get away with all kinds of stuff."
The Murphy household rule holds firm across all his children.
