[citation needed] Murphy directed several Hollywood features during the 1990s, before returning to New Zealand as second-unit director on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

[2] Murphy was a founding member of the hippy musical and theatrical co-operative Blerta, which toured New Zealand and Australia performing multi-media shows in the early 1970s.

Murphy made his name with road movie Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), the first New Zealand film to attract large-scale audiences in its home country.

In this period he directed films such as Young Guns II, Freejack, which featured Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger, and Steven Seagal sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

[5] In the later 2000s, he directed the New Zealand television comedy series Welcome to Paradise,[7] worked on the remastered DVD release of Goodbye Pork Pie, and was 2nd-unit director on XXX: State of the Union.