10 Dying Acting Careers Saved By One Amazing Movie

7. Eddie Murphy - Dolemite Is My Name

It's rare that comedians stay on top forever. Tastes change, gimmicks change, and there are only so many vanity projects audiences can take.

These same issues resulted in Eddie Murphy - once one of the biggest stars in comedy - struggling for a hit in the late 2000s. Though a bunch of his movies that decade were less than well received, it was the critical dud Norbit that felt like the final straw for audiences, which was confirmed by the box-office bomb of Meet Dave a few years later.

The 2010s proved pretty vacant and there was the worry that, like Mike Myers, the once-great comedy icon would never return.

Like so many other legendary talents who have fallen out of favour with the studios though, Eddie Murphy found solace at Netflix headlining the surprisingly excellent Dolemite Is My Name in 2019.

Hilarious, energetic and dramatically rich, it proved to be a huge success, in part thanks to Murphy's central performance. It became one of the best reviewed movies of the actor's career, and Murphy was quick to follow it up with sequels to two of his biggest hits, also on streaming services: Amazon Prime's Coming 2 America and Netflix's upcoming Beverly Hills Cop 4.