Eddie Murphy may have had a Hollywood career spanning forty years, but away from the silver screen the actor has lived a life worthy of a blockbuster script.

His movie comeback is in full swing with the release of the fourth Beverly Hills Cop film this month, and Eddie, 63,

is in a very different place offscreen compared to those heady days of the eighties when the franchise debuted.

Nowadays he is focused on family – his ten children and fiancee Paige Butcher, 45, calling them ‘the centre of everything.’

MailOnline takes a look back at the funnyman’s four decades of dating drama…

Just as he was catapulted to superstar celebrity status after Saturday Night Live spawned his movie career,

Eddie sparked romance rumours with another icon of the moment – Whitney Houston.

The music legend pursued a relationship with the comedian in the mid-1980s. Her friend Ellen White recalled that such was her obsession with Eddie, Whitney made her friends watch his film Coming To America repeatedly.

According to another pal of the singer’s, Robyn Crawford, the two were infatuated with one another just as Whitney was getting serious with Bobby Brown.

Robyn recalls how Whitney even received a phone call from Eddie on the morning of her wedding ‘to say she was making a mistake.’

After Whitney went through with that wedding, Eddie moved on with Paulette McNeely in 1989. Though little is known about their relationship, the couple welcomed their only child together, a son named Eric, now 34.

The 1989 birth of Eric though came just months before Eddie welcomed a child with his wife Nicole Murphy.

In between meeting Nicole at an awards do in 1988 and marrying her in a Plaza Hotel ceremony in 1993, Eddie also fathered a child with Tamara Hood, a son, Christian, who was born in November 1990.

Nicole is Eddie’ most enduring relationship to date, with the marriage lasting 13 years, and seeing the birth of five children – Bria, 34, Myles, 31, Shayne, 29, Zola, 24, and Bella, 21.

After his divorce from Nicole Murphy in 2006, Eddie Murphy went on to date former Spice Girl Mel B in 2006. Their relationship was short-lived, but it did result in the birth of a daughter, Angel, in April 2007. Eddie initially denied paternity but later acknowledged Angel as his child after a DNA test confirmed it.

In the same year, Eddie started dating film producer Tracey Edmonds. The two even had a symbolic beachside ceremony in Bora Bora, although it was not legally binding. The relationship ended in 2008.

Despite his string of high-profile relationships, Eddie Murphy has always maintained that his family is the most important thing to him. He often speaks about how being a father is his greatest role, and he takes pride in his children and their accomplishments.

Today, Eddie Murphy is happily engaged to Paige Butcher, with whom he shares two children. He has come a long way from his dating drama days and seems to have found true happiness in his personal life.