Eddie Murphy reveals the one habit he would do every night that he didn’t realize was an OCD symptom

Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy has opened up about his experiences with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Murphy, who once impersonated the King of Soul James Brown on stage alongside Brown himself, opened up about one habit he had which turned out to be a symptom of something bigger.

The 64-year-old celebrity candidly opened up about his experiences with the debilitating mental health condition, revealing in new documentary Being Eddie that he first realized as a child that he had OCD.

OCD is a widely misunderstood health condition which causes someone to have compulsions to carry out a particular act repeatedly and to experience repeated unwanted or unpleasant thoughts which can cause someone serious distress.

The compulsive behavior can often be a way for someone to relieve the distress caused by their unwanted intrusive thoughts.

Eddie Murphy opened up about the condition in a new documentary (Presley Ann/Getty Images for Netflix)

In the film, which has been released on Netflix, the actor revealed one habit he didn't realize was a symptom.

“I used to have that OCD when I was a kid. I didn’t know what it was. I would go and check the stove in the kitchen and make sure all the gas was off in the kitchen,” he said.

“And I’d lay down for about, you know, five minutes, and I would get back up and go back in the kitchen and look at the stove again and check all the gas, and then I’d go back in the bed and lay there for about five, 10 minutes and then get back up and go look at it and look at the stove and make sure all the gas was off.

"Then go back to bed, lay there for another 10 minutes and get back - and this went on for maybe like an hour. And I did that every night."

Murphy revealed no one had clocked that this might be a symptom of something bigger.

The actor revealed that he had struggled with OCD as a child (Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images)

"Every night. And I’d just say, ‘That’s just some weird s**t that I do'," he said. "My mother, nobody knew this was going on."

It was only when he saw a news item on the TV about OCD that he realized that the symptoms being described were very similar to what he had experienced.

He said: "It was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I - I be doing s**t like that’. I said, ‘Oh’. I was like, ‘Oh, mental illness?’... And when I saw that it was like some mental illness s**t, I made myself stop doing it.

"I was like, ‘I’m not - I’m not doing it no more. I thought I was weird. I ain’t know I had some mental illness. F**k that. I ain’t have no mental illness. Mental illness, my ass’. And I forced myself to stop doing it.”