Eddie was an American terrorist and one of the key members in the Nakatomi Plaza heist. He managed the desk in the main lobby of the building. He is the quaternary antagonist of Die Hard.
Eddie is hired along with a crew of about a dozen henchmen to rob the Nakatomi building in Los Angeles of its $640 million dollars in negotiable bearer bonds. The plan was cooked up by Eddie’s temporary employer, Hans Gruber, and seemed simple enough to pull off. Take hostages, steal the loot, and escape after blowing up the roof of the building. The police will think the bad guys were killed in the explosion, and they certainly won't wonder why the roof spontaneously blew up in the first place.
Eddie arrived in the Nakatomi building from the Pacific Courier truck. Eddie went to the lobby and hands Karl Vreski a duffle bag and puts on the Nakatomi blazer jacket to appear as one of the building's security guards. After Hans locks the building's front door with a key card, he tosses it to Eddie as he finished disguising himself.
When a fire alarm was triggered at the 32nd floor, Eddie informs Hans on the radio and Hans ordered him to call 911 and cancel the alarm and disable all response systems in the Plaza. When Hans asked Eddie which floor the alarm went off on, Eddie tells him it came from the 32nd floor and calls the oncoming rescue vehicles off. When the police car was arriving, after getting an emergency radio call from their intruder, Hans tells him to trick the cop into believing that the Nakatomi Plaza is normal. Eddie lets him in and told the cop, Sergeant Al Powell, that there was a prank call and there was a problem in their computer systems. He pretended that he was watching a college football game and that he was betting 50 bucks on someone (timeline error: the game Eddie was watching was between Notre Dame and USC presumably from the 1987 season, but those teams played on October 24, 1987, and not on Christmas Eve. Notre Dame played Texas A&M on January 1, 1988 in the Cotton Bowl, so Notre Dame could not have been playing another game on Christmas Eve). Eddie's acting skills convinced Powell that there was nothing wrong in the building until the body of Marco was dropped on his car. When the SWAT was about to come in, Eddie sealed off most of the entrances with the security lockdown doors. Uli joins up with him and hands him some ammo magazines to deal with the incoming police officers. Theo gives Eddie and Uli an update that the four officers are coming in the rear side of the building. After Uli wounds one, Eddie jumps down and wounds one of the officers' legs when trying to use the blowtorch to open the backdoor.
Eddie guarding the hostages in the 30th floor.
Later, Eddie and Uli guard the hostages in the 30th floor. When he sees the helicopters are coming to them, he informs Hans about it. They suddenly learn from the televised interview of Lucy by reporter Richard Thornburg that their enemy John McClane's wife Holly works in Nakatomi Plaza and took her hostage while Uli is taking the others to the roof to be blown up. Eddie, along with Hans and Holly, joins Theo and Kristoff as they were taking the bearer bonds form the building's vault. He helped the others getting the bearer bonds in the bags.
When he heard hostages' screaming, Eddie checks it out from upstairs and see the hostages coming back down to the emergency exits. He warns Hans that the hostages are coming back down, which led him to blow the roof with McClane on it. Eddie continued to help set up the bags while guarding Holly when McClane arrived. Eddie takes the nearby Heckler & Koch MP5 machine gun to guard him. McClane distracted both Hans and Eddie by laughter. Then McClane, after wounding Hans, fires the last round of his Beretta 92 pistol at Eddie's forehead, which killed him instantly. He was the ninth terrorist killed by McClane, dying just before Hans Gruber did, during their final confrontation with McClane.
In Popular Culture[]
Eddie was parodied in The Cleveland Show's parody episode, Die Semi-Hard, where he is voiced by rocker Huey Lewis, because actor Dennis Hayden and Huey Lewis look very similar. The character is not given a name, and is called "the guy who looks like Huey Lewis". This is kind of an inside joke between fans because for years, fans of the film have been noting the similarities between the two.
Trivia[]
According to an interview with Dennis Hayden, Eddie was originally written to die halfway through the film, however, Hayden requested to the future sister-of-law of writer, Steven E. de Souza, to get the writers to extend Eddie's role to the end, in return for hiring her as a publicist. The writers agreed, and thus, Eddie was rewritten to be the second-to-last terrorist to be killed by McClane. Hayden then joked that Eddie "survived" the events the film, leading to the possibility of the sequel 'Eddie's Revenge'.
He and Theo are the only American members of Hans' gang.
Quotes[]
Eddie wishing Al Merry Christmas
"Evening, officer. What can I do for you?"
"We've got a fire alarm."
"I had a feeling you'd be callin'."
"Merry Christmas to you."
"Everything's fine in here."
"Aw shit. I got fifty bucks bet on them assholes!"
"There's something wrong. They're coming back down!"
