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Steve Martin

Steve MartinAKA Stephen Glenn Martin

Born: 14-Aug-1945
Birthplace: Waco, TX

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Comic, Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: The Jerk

As a young man, Steve Martin sold magic doodads on Disneyland's Main Street, and performed comedy at Knott's Berry Farm. He then studied philosophy at Long Beach State, which sounds like a Steve Martin joke but isn't. In the late 1960s, Martin wrote for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. His first on-camera fame came alongside Ray Stevens, the country/comedy songwriter who wrote "Ahab the Arab", "Gitarzan", and more seriously, "Everything is Beautiful".

Martin was in the cast of The Ray Stevens Show, a 1970 Canadian sketch comedy series which aired in America as a summer replacement for The Andy Williams Show. It didn't make Martin famous, but it led to supporting work on several other comedy-variety series through the early '70s, and regular appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Martin was mostly a stand-up comic through the mid-1970s, developing an absurdist persona on stage. He shouted "happy feet" and danced, played his banjo, made balloons into animals, and made the exasperated "excuuuuse me" into a national punchline.

He's widely associated with Saturday Night Live, which Martin has hosted more often than anyone else. But no, he didn't host the debut (that was George Carlin), and in fact Martin didn't appear on SNL at all until midway through the show's second season. He hosted three episodes in the show's third season, and as looted artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb toured the country in 1978, Martin performed his tribute song, "King Tut", on SNL, accompanied by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band as the Toot Uncommons. For a while, Martin was as popular as any rock star, with huge-selling albums "Let's Get Small" and "A Wild and Crazy Guy". The true fans read and re-read his collection of short stories, Cruel Shoes.

Martin's movie career started with a silver-hammer-wielding cameo in 1978's bizarre Beatles tribute film, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1979, Martin starred in The Jerk, as a simpleton who was raised a poor black child and fell in love with Bernadette Peters. The Jerk was an enormous hit, but Martin seemed to grow tired of his own wild-and-crazy act before America did. Perhaps he noticed the faded career of Jerry Lewis. Whatever his motivation, Martin followed The Jerk with Pennies from Heaven, a depressing Depression-era musical drama that bombed, and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, an innovative film noir spoof in which he acted opposite clips from old-time stars.

After that, Martin made some of the most popular comedies of the 1980s and early '90s, including All of Me, Three Amigos, Roxanne, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and L.A. Story. With Parenthood in 1989, Martin began making more serious dramatic films, including Grand Canyon, Leap of Faith, and The Spanish Prisoner. Throughout the 90s, Martin's dramas came between less-than-his-best comedies like Father of the Bride, Mixed Nuts, and Bowfinger, and certified stinkers like Sgt. Bilko, The Out-of-Towners, and Cheaper by the Dozen.

Martin wrote the screenplays for Roxanne, L.A. Story, and Bowfinger. He also wrote the novel and movie Shopgirl, and the play and movie Picasso at the Lapin Agile. He collects art, and no longer wears an arrow through his head.

Wife: Victoria Tennant (actress; m. 20-Nov-1986; div. 1994)
Girlfriend: Bernadette Peters
Girlfriend: Linda Ronstadt
Girlfriend: Anne Heche (1995-97)
Girlfriend: Helena Bonham Carter
Wife: Anne Stringfield (writer, b. circa 1972, m. 28-Jul-2007)

    High School: Rancho Alamitos High School, Garden Grove, CA (expelled)
    High School: Garden Grove High School, Garden Grove, CA (1963)
    University: California State University Long Beach (dropped out)

    Disneyland Main Street Magic Shop
    Al Franken for Senate
    American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2010
    Los Angeles County Museum of Art
    Emmy 1969
    Grammy 1977
    Grammy 1978
    Grammy 2002
    Kennedy Center Honor 2007
    Expelled from School
    Visited Disneyland 50th Anniversary (5-May-2005)
    Roast: Lorne Michaels (2004)
    Funeral: Nora Ephron (2012)
    English Ancestry
    Irish Ancestry
    Scottish Ancestry
    Welsh Ancestry
    Risk Factors: Vegetarian, Marijuana

    TELEVISION
    The Ray Stevens Show 1970

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (Jan-2018) · Himself
    Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (14-Oct-2016)
    Love the Coopers (4-Nov-2015) [VOICE]
    Home (7-Mar-2015) [VOICE]
    The Big Year (14-Oct-2011) · Stu Preissler
    Troubadors (Jan-2011)
    It's Complicated (10-Dec-2009) · Adam
    The Pink Panther 2 (6-Feb-2009) · Clouseau
    Baby Mama (23-Apr-2008)
    The Pink Panther (19-Jan-2006)
    Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (21-Dec-2005)
    Shopgirl (9-Sep-2005)
    Jiminy Glick in La La Wood (18-Sep-2004) · Himself
    Cheaper by the Dozen (25-Dec-2003) · Tom Baker
    Looney Tunes: Back in Action (9-Nov-2003)
    Bringing Down the House (7-Mar-2003) · Peter Sanderson
    Novocaine (8-Sep-2001)
    Joe Gould's Secret (21-Jan-2000) · Charlie Duell
    Fantasia 2000 (17-Dec-1999) · Himself
    Bowfinger (13-Aug-1999)
    The Out-of-Towners (2-Apr-1999) · Henry Clark
    The Prince of Egypt (16-Dec-1998) · Hotep [VOICE]
    The Spanish Prisoner (8-Sep-1997)
    Sgt. Bilko (29-Mar-1996) · Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko
    Father of the Bride Part II (8-Dec-1995) · George Banks
    Mixed Nuts (21-Dec-1994)
    A Simple Twist of Fate (2-Sep-1994) · Michael McCann
    And the Band Played On (11-Sep-1993)
    Leap of Faith (18-Dec-1992) · Jonas
    HouseSitter (12-Jun-1992) · Davis
    Grand Canyon (25-Dec-1991) · Davis
    Father of the Bride (20-Dec-1991) · George Banks
    L.A. Story (8-Feb-1991)
    My Blue Heaven (17-Aug-1990)
    Parrot Sketch Not Included: Twenty Years of Monty Python (18-Nov-1989) · Himself
    Parenthood (2-Aug-1989) · Gil
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (14-Dec-1988) · Freddy Benson
    Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (25-Nov-1987)
    Roxanne (19-Jun-1987) · C. D. Bales
    Little Shop of Horrors (19-Dec-1986) · Orin Scrivello, DDS
    ¡Three Amigos! (12-Dec-1986)
    Movers and Shakers (3-May-1985) · Fabio Longio
    All of Me (21-Sep-1984)
    The Lonely Guy (27-Jan-1984) · Larry
    The Man with Two Brains (3-Jun-1983) · Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr
    Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (21-May-1982) · Rigby Reardon
    Pennies from Heaven (11-Dec-1981) · Arthur
    The Jerk (14-Dec-1979) · Navin
    The Kids Are Alright (26-Oct-1979) · Himself
    The Muppet Movie (22-Jun-1979)
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (24-Jul-1978)

Official Website:
http://www.stevemartin.com/

Author of books:
Cruel Shoes (1977, short stories)
Pure Drivel (1998, essays)
Shopgirl (2000, novella)
The Pleasure of My Company (2003, novel)
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (2007, memoir)
An Object of Beauty (2010, novel)

Wrote plays:
Picaso at the Lapin Agile (1993)
WASP (1996)

Comedy albums:
Let's Get Small (1977)
A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978)
Comedy Is Not Pretty (1979)
The Steve Martin Brothers (1981)


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