Comedian Eddie Murphy and his longtime girlfriend Paige Butcher have had their first child, his ninth.
A representative for Murphy, who was raised in Roosevelt from age 9, said in a statement to People magazine on Tuesday that the couple had a baby girl, Izzy Oona Murphy, that morning. She weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces, and measured 19 1⁄2 inches long. “Both mother and daughter are doing well,” the statement said.
Butcher, 36, born in Perth, Australia, is a swimsuit and lingerie model. This is her first child.
Murphy’s two eldest children are son Eric, in his mid-20s, with then-girlfriend Paulette McNeely, and son Christian, a year younger, with then-girlfriend Tamara Hood Johnson. With fiancee and later wife Nicole Mitchell, to whom he was married from 1993 to 2006, he has five children: model-actress Bria, 26; son Myles, 22; and daughters Shayne, 21, Zola, 15, and Bella, 14.
Murphy also has a daughter, Angel, 9, with former Spice Girl Melanie “Mel B” Brown. He had contested paternity until a DNA test confirmed his fatherhood, and after an initial coolness has developed a relationship with the girl. Brown told the U.K. newspaper The Guardian in November 2014, “We go over there as a family, we have dinners together, everything is fine . . . now. He’s a great guy. Look, we fell in love with each other, we had a gorgeous child together.”
Murphy and film/TV producer Tracey Edmonds had a symbolic but not legally binding marriage ceremony on a private island near Bora Bora on New Year’s Day 2008, but two weeks later announced they were ending their relationship.
Murphy, who shot to stardom on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s, went on to headline such films as the “Beverly Hills Cop” trilogy and two “Nutty Professor” movies, and to voice Donkey in the “Shrek” films and TV specials. He was nominated for a supporting actor Academy Award for his role in 2006’s “Dreamgirls.”
