Music Matters
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Steve Martin might stop acting, but he's worn many hats over his long career

Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) are shown in the third episode of Hulu's <em>Only Murders In The Building</em>.
Craig Blankenhorn
/
HULU
Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) are shown in the third episode of Hulu's Only Murders In The Building.

Longtime actor Steve Martin told The Hollywood Reporter he plans to scale back on acting after the end of the hit Hulu show Only Murders in the Building, though he came short of saying he would retire.

"When this television show is done, I'm not going to seek others," he said. "I'm not going to seek other movies. I don't want to do cameos. This is, weirdly, it."

In his six-decade long career, Martin has been a jack of all trades, and is one Tony Award away from becoming an EGOT (Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony) winner.

Should Martin decide to move away from his distinguished career in entertainment, here's a look back at the many talents he's put on display.

Stand-up comedian

Martin got his start in comedy as a writer on the 1960s show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which he won an Emmy in 1969. He began hosting Saturday Night Live (which he has hosted 15 times) in the 1970s, and gained further notoriety by performing sold out shows using his offbeat style of stand-up, which often incorporated music and props.

He retired from stand-up in the 1980s and went on to pursue acting, and later received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2005.

He returned to the craft in 2016 when he opened for Jerry Seinfeld. That same year, he went on a national tour with Only Murders in the Building costar Martin Short and the pair released the Netflix special, An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life, in 2018.

Celebrated actor

Martin has starred in dozens of movies, including Three Amigos (1986), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Bowfinger (1999) and the Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen franchises.

While he was never nominated for an Oscar, he received an honorary award in 2013.

In 2016, Martin helped write and compose his first Broadway musical, Bright Star, set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in the 1940s. He received five Tony nominations for the play.

Since 2021, Martin has been a co-creator and has starred as an amateur podcaster in Only Murders in the Building, which is currently nominated for seven Emmys, three of them being for Martin.

Grammy-winning musician

Martin, who was born in Texas and raised in California, began playing the banjo as a teenager and later heavily incorporated the instrument in his stand-up routines in the 1970s. He went on to win a Grammy in 2002 for his cover of Earl Scrugg's "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

He released his first music-only album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, in 2009, for which he won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2010.

Martin went on to win three more Grammys for his contributions to the bluegrass genre.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ayana Archie
[Copyright 2024 NPR]