Chances are, if you’ve seen more than one Farrelly brothers movie over the last five years, you’ve seen Dan Murphy on the silver screen.

He played the ill-tempered bowling alley operator who mangled Woody Harrelson’s hand in Kingpin and the nasty crip who barked orders at Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary. And, when Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger needed help in Me, Myself & Irene, he was the kindly FBI agent who spearheaded the team that came to their rescue. Not bad for a 45-year-old quadriplegic from New England who never planned to see himself on screen.

Granted, so far his roles have been small. But with three films in less than five years, one already out this year and another soon to be released, Murphy has amassed more than enough screen time to qualify for a Screen Actors Guild card. He’s also shown promise enough to be signed by Hollywood talent agency, Kazarian Spencer & Associates. As they say in Hollywood, his star looms bright on the horizon.

On the other hand, maybe they don’t say that in Hollywood. Everyone knows things don’t always turn out as planned, and if anyone has learned that lesson, Murphy has.

Back in 1974 in Jamaica Plain, Mass., his plan was to go to college, get a degree in criminal justice, maybe a law degree, get married, have kids, live your typical two-car-garage-and-white-picket-fence life. But the summer after his first year at Stonehill College, Murphy’s life took a sharp zag.

At the time, he was working during his summer vacation, caddying and greenskeeping at the New Seabury Country Club on Cape Cod, Mass. He couldn’t imagine a better way to spend his summer, golf being one of his passions. He’d lettered on the links and in hockey at Boston Latin School. “In those days, I’d rather have played golf than do almost anything else,” he says. Still, when fellow greenskeeper Peter Farrelly and some of Murphy’s other buddies suggested that they sail to Martha’s Vineyard on their day off instead of spending another day puttering around the golf course, he shrugged and agreed, no hesitation.

It was the first weekend in August, on a day that started hot and grew hotter. By the time they pulled into Oak Bluffs Harbor on the Vineyard, Murphy was ready to cool down. As soon as they docked, he climbed a nearby piling and dove into the chilly water. “I didn’t know I was in trouble until I saw something floating in front of my face,” he says. “I thought it was a fish, but it was my arm.” That was the moment he knew something was wrong. Not quite 19, Murphy had broken his neck at the C6 level. One of his friends pulled him out of the water. All of his other buddies, including Peter Farrelly, gathered around and did what they could, which to them seemed next to nothing. It wasn’t long before a Coast Guard helicopter had evacuated him to Massachusetts General Hospital on the mainland.

The Second Most Important Day

Murphy recuperated in the hospital and then went on to rehab at Braintree Hospital while his buddies finished their summer vacations and returned to school. It was a year before he could return to Stonehill College.

He stuck to his original plan and earned his degree in criminal justice in 1979, but decided against law and accepted a management position with Liberty Mutual instead, becoming the program coordinator for Liberty’s medical service center and rehab clinic. Four and a half years later he moved on to Lotus Development, managing the education sales department. He married a friend of his sister’s and built a custom house in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston in 1988. Life was good.

But it also was too cold, and too unsatisfying. In 1993, tired of freezing northern winters, anxious to do something more meaningful, Murphy quit. “I was just following my heart and what my body would let me do,” he says. “When I’m unhappy, my body has a way of shutting down.”

He and his wife moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. where Murphy went to work for HELP, an organization that consults on ADA compliance and accessibility solutions. For the first time in his life, he was deeply involved in advocacy, especially trying to show employers the value of hiring people with disabilities.

At this time he also became active in Shake-A-Leg, a Miami-based sailing program for people with disabilities, returning to sailing for the first time in almost 20 years and loving it as much as he had once loved golf. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, Harry Horgan, the founder of Shake-A-Leg, had been a college buddy of Murphy’s friend, Peter Farrelly.

Murphy had never lost touch with Peter. Visiting on Cape Cod during the summer, he’d occasionally run into both him and his brother, Bobby. “I’d heard Peter had moved to California to write scripts,” says Murphy. “I told him I hoped it all worked out for him. You know, when someone moves out there, you say, ‘Yeah, right, they’ll be back soon.'”

But Peter did not return, and one day in 1994 Murphy received an invitation to the premiere of the Farrelly brothers’ first film, Dumb and Dumber, in Warwick, R.I. Of course he planned to go. Newly separated from his wife, he took his younger sister. “I remember saying to her, ‘What if the movie stinks? What do I say?'”

As it happened, choosing words was not a problem. He enjoyed every minute of the movie. Still, when Peter came up to him and asked how he liked the film, Murphy couldn’t resist. “Peter, I didn’t see anybody in a wheelchair in that movie,” he teased.

Looking back, Murphy realizes now that his kidding remark led to an offer that changed his life. “The premiere was the second most important day in my life, after the accident,” he says. “And Peter Farrelly managed to be with me for both.”

Bitten by the Acting Bug

Fortunately for the Farrellys—and for Murphy—Dumb and Dumber was a big hit. Its success won the brothers a contract with 20th Century Fox and the wherewithal to produce a series of movies. When Dan ran into Farrelly the next summer, Peter said, “I’ve got this movie coming out and it’s got this part in it for you. Do you want to do it?”

Murphy’s response was automatic: “Are you kidding me?”

“Before I knew it,” he says, “I was in the Amish country of Pennsylvania with Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid and Bill Murray. What a trip! It was weird watching guys I grew up with tell Harrelson and Murray what to do.” As for his acting, everybody on the set said Murphy was a natural.

When he returned to Florida, he found he couldn’t forget the experience. So he enrolled in an acting school and soon began skipping sales meetings to attend classes. When Peter Farrelly invited him to participate in his next film, There’s Something About Mary, Murphy jumped in feet first. After all, selling wheelchair lifts and elevators could hardly compete with the opportunity to act with Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.

“I got bitten by the bug,” he says. He also knew if he wanted to make acting a career, it would soon be time to move to Los Angeles. But before he did, he had many conversations with people in the industry, including Gail Williamson, coordinator of talent development and industry relations for the Media Access Office, a California agency which promotes accurate portrayal of people with disabilities in entertainment and also helps them find jobs in the industry.

Williamson made sure Murphy had no illusions over how tough it was to break into the business. “There are 98,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild,” she told him. “Of these only 19 percent earn the $7,500 minimum required by SAG to qualify for benefits.”

The figures did little to discourage him. A little over a year ago, Murphy took a deep breath, quit his job, sold his condo in Florida and made the move to Los Angeles.

“Dan is my biggest failure,” Williamson jokes. “He moved to L.A. after I gave him all the reasons not to.” Then she says, “But at least he came out with the contacts and the wherewithal to succeed.”

No doubt it doesn’t hurt an aspiring actor to have friends like Peter and Bobby Farrelly. It also helps to be determined and focused. Murphy knows he’s just one of over 500 actors with disabilities in Media Access’ files. “But I’m not just sitting around waiting for someone to call,” he says.

What are his chances of making it? “I think if he hadn’t had his accident, he would have been an actor in his 20s,” says writer-director Peter Farrelly. “He’s a ham and he has lots of charisma. He’s phenomenal. What he has is a presence and he’s got the desire, and that equals talent.”

Honing His Craft

Besides participating in a few projects for the Farrellys, Murphy spent the last year getting his bearings in Los Angeles and honing his craft. Last summer he was invited to participate in the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped in Belfast, Maine. In Los Angeles he’s been busy with classes in scriptwriting, workshops on auditions and marketing at Media Access–as well as 18 hours a week of acting classes both at Media Access and at Steve Eastin Studio. Recently he went on his first casting call, for a national ad. He hasn’t received any word yet, but he did get a callback.

He did land another role, though–playing a webmaster in It’s a Secret, a small independent film shot at the end of January. Not that any of it has brought in much money so far. Murphy definitely still qualifies as a struggling actor.

He recently moved from tony Marina del Rey to a small, less expensive apartment in North Hollywood, an artsy area the locals call NoHo. “I wanted to be closer to the business,” he says. “Closer to other actors and to all of the small theaters–there are six within pushing distance of my apartment.”

One day he hopes to be able to retire to the Florida Keys and spend his days sailing and giving acting workshops. But that’s for later. For now, he has big dreams. His goal? To win an Oscar. But more than that, Murphy says, “My mission is to do whatever I can to make it easier for actors with disabilities to break into the business.”

Helping other actors with disabilities may be his mission but Murphy hardly ever thinks of himself as an advocate anymore. “I think acting fits my personality more than advocacy,” he says. “Maybe I can do more by getting disabled characters into public view than I can by kicking someone’s butt about access.”

Still, he is active in supporting Media Access, serving on some of its committees. He knows all too well the harsh truth of breaking into the business. In Hollywood, casting directors rarely think of seeking actors with disabilities unless a role is written for one. “It’s all about changing attitudes,” he says. “They need to understand, if a role calls for a man between 35 and 50 and there’s nothing in the role to rule out someone in a wheelchair–then there’s no reason I, or another actor with a disability, couldn’t play the part.”

It especially irks him that while casting directors often choose nondisabled actors to play disabled roles, they rarely think of doing the opposite.

So when he showed up for work on the set of the recently released movie, Say It Isn’t So, and director J.B. Rogers surprised him by asking if he could perform his role as a nondisabled man, Murphy just grinned from ear to ear. “Sure,” he said.

“I had to rethink how to play my part. I ended up sitting in a regular chair playing a mental patient. It was fun,” he says.

Not only was it fun, but good for his career. “I don’t want to be looked at as an actor who’s limited by his physicality. I can play a part in my power chair or my manual or, as I’ve just shown, I can play someone without a physical disability.”

Most recently he proved his versatility again, playing a nondisabled zoo supervisor in the upcoming Farrelly brothers film, Osmosis Jones. “They filmed me sitting, riding around in a jeep,” he says. Was it a stretch–a quadriplegic playing a nondisabled man? “No problem,” says Murphy, “It’s just acting.”

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