50 Fun Facts About Steve Martin

Steve Martin was born in 1945 in which central Texas city?

Waco, also the birthplace of Dr Pepper, was home only until he was five, when the Martins moved to Inglewood, California, where his father sold real estate and acted at a local playhouse.

Where was Steve Martin's first job, selling guidebooks and later working in a magic shop?

Disneyland hired him at 10 to sell 25-cent guidebooks, and he stayed eight years, watching vaudevillian Wally Boag's act until he had it memorised.

What did Martin major in at California State University, Long Beach, before switching to theatre at UCLA?

Philosophy. He credited his logic classes with his act: once he decided there was no cause and effect, twisting a punch line into a non sequitur came easily.

Martin won his first Emmy in 1969, aged 23, as a writer on which show?

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour hired him after a girlfriend who danced on the show handed his college writing to head writer Mason Williams, who at first paid him out of his own pocket.

In 1968 Martin won a Dating Game date with the daughter of which Rat Pack star?

Dean Martin's daughter Deana chose him, years before the unknown TV writer who happened to share her surname became famous himself.

As of 2022, who had hosted Saturday Night Live more often than Steve Martin?

Alec Baldwin had hosted 17 times to Martin's 16, taking the record from him in 2011 on a night when Martin turned up to demand he take a drug test.

Which hand gesture is Martin credited with popularising through his Saturday Night Live appearances?

Air quotes. His ironic finger-waggling in the late 1970s is credited with carrying the gesture into pop culture, a decade before the name's earliest known use, in a 1989 Spy magazine essay.

Martin and Aykroyd's 'wild and crazy' Festrunk Brothers came from which country?

Czechoslovakia. The Festrunks had emigrated to America, where their swaggering pursuit of 'foxes' rarely impressed the women they met.

Martin's 1977 album Let's Get Small launched which national catchphrase?

Excuse me! His drawn-out 'Well, excuuuse me!' swept the country, and the record became the best-selling comedy album of its year and won a Grammy.

Martin's 1978 novelty hit 'King Tut' was backed by which group, credited as the 'Toot Uncommons'?

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were old friends: Martin went to high school with their banjo player John McEuen, whose brother Bill managed both the band and the comedian.

In one stand-up routine, Martin claimed that his real name was what?

Gern Blanston was pure invention, confessed deadpan as his real name. The riff took on a life of its own, and a Gern Blanston website later appeared online.

Which gag prop was as much a part of Martin's 1970s stage look as his white suit?

Arrow through the head: in his 1970s act he put on nose glasses, bunny ears and the fake arrow, then careened across the stage in a fit of happy feet.

Whose 2016 show did Martin open with a surprise stand-up comeback?

Jerry Seinfeld's crowd at New York's Beacon Theatre had no warning: Martin walked on as the opening act and did ten minutes of jokes and banjo, his first stand-up set since he walked away from it decades earlier.

Martin's 1977 short The Absent-Minded Waiter was nominated for what?

An Academy Award nomination for best live-action short went to the film Martin wrote himself, about a waiter so hopeless that diners ask for his table: he hands out thousands in change for bills nobody has paid.

Who directed The Jerk (1979), Martin's first starring role?

Carl Reiner directed Martin three more times, and their next film was born over lunch: stuck on another script, they wondered about cutting Martin into old Bogart movies, which became Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

The Jerk cost about $4 million, so roughly how much did it gross worldwide?

$100 million, roughly 25 times what it cost. Martin co-wrote the film as his first starring vehicle, and its success led to three more comedies with the same director.

In The Jerk, who raised Martin's character, Navin Johnson?

A family of Black sharecroppers in Mississippi raised Navin, who is the last to notice he is white; hearing on his birthday that he was adopted sends him off to St. Louis to find himself.

Martin took tap-dancing lessons for months for which 1981 musical drama, his first serious role?

Pennies from Heaven cast Martin as a Depression-era song-sheet salesman who does everything but act funny. It disappointed at the box office, and he blamed himself: 'it's me and not a comedy.'

Which director met Martin in London about starring in a film he made years later?

Stanley Kubrick had Martin in mind for a comic take on the novella he later filmed straight as Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise in the lead.

In Three Amigos (1986), which bandit do the characters of Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short end up fighting?

El Guapo is terrorising a Mexican village that sends for the Amigos. The three fired silent-film actors arrive expecting to put on a show, not to face a real bandit.

In the 1986 film of Little Shop of Horrors, Martin played a sadistic what?

Dentist Orin Scrivello is Audrey's abusive boyfriend, and he gets a fitting exit: after he dies by accident, shop assistant Seymour feeds him to the man-eating plant.

In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, John Candy's character Del Griffith sells what?

Shower curtain rings, 'the best in the world' by Del's own account, mark him as the rumpled opposite of Martin's sleek advertising man, whose cab he unknowingly takes two days before Thanksgiving.

Roxanne (1987), which Martin wrote and starred in, is a modern version of which play?

Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand's 1897 play, lends the film its plot and its hero's initials: C.D. Bales woos Roxanne through a handsome, tongue-tied stand-in, just as Cyrano did.

In Roxanne, what is C.D. Bales's job?

Fire chief C.D. Bales is witty, brave and well liked in his small town, yet it is a shy new recruit on his own crew who catches Roxanne's eye.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) paired Martin with which British actor?

Michael Caine plays a suave Riviera con man who challenges Martin's lowbrow rival to a contest: whoever swindles their next mark first can stay, and the loser must leave town.

Who played Estragon opposite Martin's Vladimir in Mike Nichols's 1988 Waiting for Godot?

Robin Williams and Martin made the seven-week Lincoln Center run a sellout before rehearsals began: subscribers took every seat, so the box office never opened to the public.

Who directed Parenthood (1989), in which Martin played the anxious father Gil Buckman?

Ron Howard's hit recast Martin as the anxious suburban dad, a part he went on to play again in Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen.

Martin wrote and starred in L.A. Story (1991) opposite which actress, his wife at the time?

Victoria Tennant plays the British journalist his bored TV weatherman falls for, nudged towards her by secret messages from a freeway sign. The couple married in 1986 and divorced in 1994.

In Bowfinger (1999), which Martin wrote, he starred opposite which comedian?

Eddie Murphy plays Kit Ramsey, the biggest star in Hollywood, whom Bowfinger's ragtag crew films in secret because he never agreed to be in their movie.

In the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther, Martin played which character?

Inspector Clouseau gets the Pink Panther case only as a decoy: Chief Inspector Dreyfus puts the bumbling detective in the spotlight while his best officers work in secret. Martin co-wrote the script.

In The Simpsons, Martin voiced Ray Patterson, who loses which Springfield job to an election challenge from Homer?

Sanitation commissioner Patterson is beaten by Homer's slogan "Can't someone else do it?", and Homer then burns through the department's annual budget in a single month.

Martin's 2005 film Shopgirl was adapted from what?

A novella he wrote himself: Martin then scripted the film too and played Ray, the wealthy customer who courts Claire Danes's sales clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.

What was the title of Martin's first book, a collection of absurdist comic sketches and stories?

Cruel Shoes packed in deadpan pieces with titles like "How to Fold Soup"; reviewers slammed it, and the 1979 trade edition became a bestseller anyway.

Martin's play Picasso at the Lapin Agile imagines Picasso meeting which scientist in a Paris bar?

Albert Einstein and Picasso argue art against science in the play. When an Oregon high school dropped its 2009 staging after a parents' petition, Martin offered to finance an off-campus production.

Martin wrote the book and co-wrote the music for which 2016 Broadway musical with Edie Brickell?

Bright Star grew out of Love Has Come for You, the bluegrass album Martin and Brickell had made together, whose title track won them a Grammy.

Martin's 2017 Broadway comedy Meteor Shower starred which stand-up comedian?

Amy Schumer played Corky, an Ojai wife whose dinner guests, played by Keegan-Michael Key and Laura Benanti, arrive set on seducing and unsettling their hosts while meteors rain down outside.

Who joined Martin to open the hostless 2020 Oscars?

Chris Rock shared the opening monologue at a ceremony with no host for the second year running, a job Martin, who had hosted three times, called "an incredible demotion".

Martin taught himself the banjo as a teenager by doing what to bluegrass records?

Slowing them from 33 to 16 rpm on his turntable let Martin pick the songs out note by note, which is how he taught himself an instrument he would later win Grammys for playing.

Which country star guested on Martin's first all-music record, The Crow?

Dolly Parton sang on The Crow, as did the Irish folk singer Mary Black, and the comedian's album of his own banjo tunes went on to win the Grammy for best bluegrass album.

Which North Carolina bluegrass band has toured and recorded with Martin since 2009?

Steep Canyon Rangers backed Martin on the 2011 album Rare Bird Alert, which revived his 1970s novelty hit "King Tut" as a live bluegrass number.

In Father of the Bride, Martin's frazzled George Banks is arrested in a supermarket for ripping open packs of what?

Hot dog buns come twelve to a pack but hot dogs only eight, so George tears out the four buns he refuses to pay for and lands in jail until his wife bails him out.

Only Murders in the Building stars Martin and Martin Short alongside which singer?

Selena Gomez plays Mabel Mora, who joins two much older neighbours in making a true-crime podcast after a killing in their Manhattan apartment building.

Only Murders in the Building premiered in 2021 on which streaming service?

The series debuted on Hulu in August 2021. In 2022 Martin and Short co-hosted SNL together, with Gomez making an appearance.

Martin and Martin Short's 2018 Netflix special is called An Evening You Will do what for the Rest of Your Life?

Forget is the self-mocking twist on the usual promise: the special took its title from the pair's touring stage show and was taped on a stop in Greenville, South Carolina.

Martin won the Kennedy Center's 2005 humor prize, named for which humorist?

Mark Twain got the deadpan treatment: "I think Mark Twain is a great guy, and I can't wait to meet him," Martin said on being named the eighth winner of the Kennedy Center's prize for American humor.

Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty is set in which world?

New York art is home ground for Martin: a collector since 1968, he put 28 of his own pictures, Picassos and Hoppers among them, on public show for the first time in 2001, at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

The Campendonk landscape Martin bought in 2004 later turned out to be what?

A modern forgery by Wolfgang Beltracchi: Martin resold it through Christie's at a loss, never suspecting a thing, and another Beltracchi fake hung in a show at the Met.

Who was best man at Martin's 2007 wedding to Anne Stringfield?

Lorne Michaels stood up for him at a wedding the roughly 75 guests didn't know was coming: they had been invited to Martin's Los Angeles home for a party.

Which actress and singer, Martin's girlfriend at the time, played his love interest Marie in The Jerk?

Bernadette Peters plays Marie, and the real-life couple stop the gags for a gentle duet of the old standard Tonight You Belong to Me, with Martin strumming a ukulele.

In All of Me, a botched soul transfer leaves which comedian's dead millionaire controlling half of Martin's body?

Lily Tomlin's Edwina Cutwater ends up running the right side of lawyer Roger Cobb while he keeps the left, so simply crossing a sidewalk turns into a tug-of-war inside one body.