Steve Martin Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth & Biography

Steve Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer and musician best known as Navin Johnson in The Jerk, as Neal Page in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and as Charles-Haden Savage in Only Murders in the Building. Born on August 14, 1945, in Waco, Texas, Martin, 81, began his career as a stand-up comedian, became a film star in the 1980s, and in recent years has found a new audience as a television detective and as a banjo player.

Quick Facts

Who Is Steve Martin?

Steve Martin is an actor, comedian, writer and musician whose career has spanned more than six decades. As Navin Johnson, a man who was born a poor black child and who becomes a millionaire by inventing a device that keeps glasses from slipping, in The Jerk (1979), a film he co-wrote, Martin played a character who is innocent, funny and, in the end, deeply human, and the film became a classic of American comedy. He is also known as Neal Page, a businessman who is trying to get home for Thanksgiving, in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), opposite John Candy, and as Charles-Haden Savage, a former television detective who investigates murders in his apartment building, in Only Murders in the Building (2021-), alongside Martin Short and Selena Gomez.

Beyond those roles, Martin has shown a wide range. He played C.D. Bales, a fire chief with a large nose, in Roxanne (1987), a film he wrote and which was inspired by the play Cyrano de Bergerac, and he played George Banks, a father who is coping with his daughter’s wedding, in Father of the Bride (1991) and its sequel. He starred in Three Amigos (1986), alongside Chevy Chase and Martin Short, and he played in The Lonely Guy (1984), in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), opposite Michael Caine, and in Bowfinger (1999), a film he wrote. He has won five Grammy Awards, for his comedy albums and for his bluegrass music, and he is a noted banjo player.

Early Life & Background

Stephen Glenn Martin was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Mary Lee, a homemaker, and Glenn Vernon Martin, a real estate salesman and actor. The family moved to Inglewood, California, and then to Garden Grove, California, when Martin was a child, and he grew up in Southern California. He attended Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana, California, and California State University, Long Beach, where he studied philosophy and theatre. He worked at Disneyland as a teenager, selling guidebooks and performing magic tricks, and he began performing stand-up comedy in the 1960s.

He became a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969), for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in 1969, and he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where his stand-up comedy, including his “wild and crazy guy” character and his use of the banjo and the arrow through the head, made him a star. He released the comedy albums Let’s Get Small (1977) and A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978), both of which were bestsellers, and he hosted Saturday Night Live many times, becoming one of the show’s most frequent guest hosts.

Career

Martin’s career in film includes Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), The Jerk, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), All of Me (1984), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Three Amigos, Roxanne, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood (1989), Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride Part II (1995), Bowfinger, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Pink Panther (2006), and It’s Complicated (2009). He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Roxanne, and he won an Honorary Academy Award in 2013, for his work in film and television.

On television, Martin has played in Only Murders in the Building, in which he stars as Charles-Haden Savage, a role that has earned him nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award. He was married to Victoria Tennant, an actress, from 1986 to 1994. He married Anne Stringfield, a writer and former staffer at The New Yorker, in 2007, and they have a daughter together, born in 2012. He is a noted art collector, a banjo player who has released several bluegrass albums with the Steep Canyon Rangers, and a writer of plays, novels and memoirs, including Born Standing Up (2007). He is known for his work as a comedian, as an actor, as a musician, and for a career that has lasted for more than sixty years.

Facts About Steve Martin

• He played Navin Johnson in The Jerk (1979) and Neal Page in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987).
• He stars as Charles-Haden Savage in Only Murders in the Building (2021-).
• He has won five Grammy Awards, for his comedy albums and for his bluegrass music.
• He won an Honorary Academy Award in 2013 and an Emmy Award for writing in 1969.
• He has been married to Anne Stringfield since 2007, and they have a daughter together.

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