The straight man/funny man teaming of Murphy and Lawrence makes a great combination in "Life"

Web posted on: Monday, April 19, 1999 5:10:57 PM EDT

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Some actors take their roles as a serious business. But when Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy filmed their hit comedy "Life," it was pure funny business.

Murphy and Lawrence, who play two slick New Yorkers thrown into a Mississippi prison camp, kept the cast and crew shackled in laughter, even if the joke wasn't in the script.

"There was a lot of stuff where we were doing scenes, and (we would) bust out laughing," recalls Murphy. He says the cut-ups came "more on this movie than ever, where you can't finish scenes. I hope we didn't (mess up) up the movie."

Judging by the first weekend's box-office receipts on "Life," Lawrence and Murphy didn't mess up anything. The movie topped all others, raking in $20.7 million.

Murphy and Lawrence, with the aid of Hollywood, age 60 years over the course of the movie

Part of the film's fun includes the "aging" of Murphy and Lawrence. Famed make-up artist Rick Baker applied the wrinkles to the comic actors.

Baker has grown accustomed to Murphy's face, sculpting it for all those "Nutty Professor" characters and even transforming Murphy into an old white guy in "Coming to America."

"I trip off it," Murphy says of the make-up. "You know what's interesting about the makeup is when you get up close and you know he's been working on your face, and you see where the makeup starts and it stops, and how seamless it is. You could look at it for hours."

So less than a month after all the sophisticated Academy Awards hoopla, here comes the joke festival in jail -- definitely not "Shakespeare in Love," but already a hit with movie audiences.

"I'm in a whole different part of show business," Murphy says. "I'm not even part of 'Shakespeare in Love.'"