Please Rewind Talent Wall

Steve Martin

Steve Martin’s screen comedy often begins with composure and then tests how long that composure can possibly survive. Whether playing an exasperated traveller, a schemer or a father overwhelmed by family life, he has a gift for making precision and absurdity work together. Born on August 14, 1945, in Waco, Texas, Martin developed his performing skills through magic, juggling and balloon animals before finding a national audience as a comedy writer and stand-up performer. He wrote for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, sharing an Emmy Award with the show’s writing team in 1969, and became a frequent presence on Saturday Night Live. After his stand-up career expanded to arena-sized audiences, he stepped away from it in 1981 to concentrate on movies. The Please Rewind selection catches Martin during a particularly rich stretch of that film career. The Man with Two Brains and All of Me continued his run of comedies directed by Carl Reiner, while Three Amigos paired him with Martin Short and Chevy Chase in a film Martin also co-wrote. His turn as the sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello in Little Shop of Horrors gave its musical mayhem an extra jolt. Then came two sharply different 1987 performances. In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Martin joined John Candy for John Hughes’s travel comedy. In Roxanne, his adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, he starred and co-wrote the screenplay, earning a Writers Guild of America Award. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels placed him opposite Michael Caine under director Frank Oz, while Ron Howard’s Parenthood made room for a more grounded strain of family frustration. Father of the Bride became another defining showcase for Martin’s ability to turn anxiety, affection and escalating disorder into comedy. He later moved into animation as the voice of Hotep in The Prince of Egypt. Beyond acting, Martin’s work has continued across screenwriting, plays, fiction and banjo music—a varied career connected by an unmistakably off-centre comic sensibility.