How many of his films have you seen?

He was probably the one actor in Hollywood for whom the hero characters he played weren't as tough as he was. He was a legitimate badass. Aside from the combat decorations, he occasionally showed his tough side in Hollywood. Noted drunken bully Lawrence Tierney, who was constantly getting into fights and getting arrested for it, started mouthing off at a party, and Murphy intimidated him into leaving with a few soft spoken words and a glare. One of Murphy's friends said that there were a few fights, where macho types thought they could take the decorated hero, and started something -- probably because Murphy was average height, and had a slim build -- but they all got their asses whooped. In 1970, he was tried for attempted murder, but he was acquitted because the man to whom he delivered a beating -- a 6'3" tall guard dog trainer -- had abused a German Shepherd belonging to a female friend of Murphy's, and then the trainer had also groped and verbally abused the woman when she protested. Murphy's defense was quite literally "if I had really been tying to kill him, he'd be dead."

Yet for all Murphy's toughness, he was a good man, who was kind and generous with children (he emptied his bank account to help an orphanage in Saigon when he was filming "The Quiet American") and he knew a lot of his fans were kids, so he was careful never to do anything to make them think less of him. He was a real hero, worthy of admiration.