Born in Atlanta on November 10, 1977, Murphy was raised by her mother in Edison, New Jersey. A precocious child who began putting on shows when she was a toddler, Murphy was acting in regional theatre productions by the age of nine. Work in various commercials followed, and in 1990 she landed her first television role, on the sitcom Blossom. She then went on to a lead on the short-lived sitcom Drexell’s Class in 1991, and the following year she made her film debut in the dysfunctional family drama Family Prayers. Murphy’s talent for portraying all sorts of dysfunction was further exhibited in such films as Clueless; the Reese Witherspoon trailer trash odyssey Freeway (1996); and the made-for-TV David and Lisa (1998). Murphy won particular acclaim for her work in the last film; the story of two emotionally troubled teens (Murphy and Lukas Haas) who reach out to each other allowed the actress to prove herself in a purely dramatic role. In 1999, Murphy could again be seen portraying an emotionally damaged character in Girl, Interrupted, in which she played a patient at a mental institution. That same year, she explored the collective insanity of the beauty pageant world in Drop Dead Gorgeous, playing a pageant contestant who’d rather be living it up in New York with her cross-dressing brother. On the small screen that year, she switched to much darker fare with the Holocaust drama The Devil’s Arithmetic. With her plate increasingly full moving into the new millennium, Murphy could be seen in the both the Michael Douglas thriller Don’t Say a Word, and alongside Drew Barrymore in Riding in Cars With Boys in 2001. Cast opposite Eminem in director Curtis Hanson’s 2002 drama 8 Mile, Murphy provided a compelling performance as an aspiring rap star’s unapologetic muse before starting 2003 on a lighter note with the comedy Just Married. In 2005 in the film Sin City, she played neo-noir femme Shellie in the first in a series of films based on Frank Miller’s graphic novels of the same name. 2006 saw Murphy starring in Karen Moncrieff’s ensemble drama The Dead Girl as the titular deceased female, a hard-living prostitute who is brutally murdered. This was one of Murphy’s darkest and most accomplished roles to date. Also in 2006 Murphy had a role in the animated musical comedy Happy Feet for which she covered Queen’s “Somebody to Love” and Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland”. Murphy passed away on December 20th 2009, from circumstances that have yet to be confirmed.| |
