Andrea Martin was born on January 15, 1947, in Portland, Maine,[3][4] the eldest of three children of Armenian-American parents Sybil A. (Armenian: Սիբիլ Մանուկեան Մարթին; née Manoogian) and John Papazian Martin (Armenian: Ջօն Փափազեան Մարթին; 1917–2010).[5][6] Her paternal grandparents were from Van, present-day Turkey, who had escaped the Armenian Genocide.[7] Her maternal grandmother immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15.[8] Her paternal grandfather, an amateur thespian, changed the family's name from Papazian to Martin.[9] Her maternal grandparents, who were from Constantinople, started the Armenian School at the Chestnut Street Church in Portland, Maine.[10][11][12][8][13][14][15] Andrea's father owned Martin's Foods, a grocery-store chain.[16] She has mentioned that although her grandparents "did not know what assimilation was," her parents worked very hard to assimilate into the U.S. As such, Martin only started connecting with her ancestral identity later in life.[17]
When she was two years old, her mother's leg had broken, so she would often read to her daughter. She and her mother would often take turns reading Shakespeare, Paul Revere's Ride, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. She took piano lessons when she was eight, reciting a poem about a kitten at the rotunda of the Portland Museum of Art and played the piano there. Martin transferred from Nathan Clifford School to St. Joseph’s Academy before entering high school. She graduated from Deering High School in 1965, where she was a member of the Dramatic Club and won Miss Deering High 1965.[10]
Career
Soon after graduating from Emerson College, Martin won a role in a touring company of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. After frequent visits to Toronto, she relocated from New York City to Toronto in 1970 and immediately found steady work in television, film, and theater.
Her additional Broadway credits include Candide (1997) and Oklahoma! (2002), and the Broadway premiere of Young Frankenstein (2007), all of which brought her Tony Award nominations for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.[21]
Martin starred alongside Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon in the Broadway revival of Exit the King. For her performance as Juliette, she was nominated for a Drama Desk and an Outer Critics Circle Award. She wrote and performed in the critically acclaimed one-woman show Nude, Nude, Totally Nude in Los Angeles and New York City,[22] receiving a 1996 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One Person Show.
Her other theater credits include the leads in The Rose Tattoo and Betty's Summer Vacation, for which she won the Elliot Norton Award for Best Actress, both produced at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. During the winter of 2012–2013, she played Berthe, Pippin's grandmother, in the American Repertory Theater production of Pippin in Cambridge, Massachusetts, singing the classic song "No Time At All".[23] The show transferred to Broadway at the Music Box Theatre and opened in April 2013. For Pippin Martin won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Martin's last performance as Berthe in the Broadway production of Pippin was on September 22, 2013. She appeared on Broadway in the new play written and directed by James Lapine, Act One, for which she received the Outer Critics Circle Award.[24][25]
Martin played Wanda Falbo the Word Fairy in a series of short segments on Sesame Street, debuting in 1989. The character was based on Mrs. Falbo, one of Martin's SCTV characters. She also appeared on Kate & Allie as the executive producer of a low-rated cable channel, which was spun-off into her own CBS series, Roxie. Martin is known to Star Trek fans as one of two actresses to play Ishka, Quark's iconoclastic mother on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. For her role, she was made up to appear as an older woman, although in reality, Martin is less than three years older than Armin Shimerman, who played Quark.
In 2006, she played a major role in the remake of Black Christmas. She played Helaine in the 2009 breakout independent film Breaking Upwards. In the episode titled Pupil, she played an emergency room patient on the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie, which was aired July 27, 2009. In 2012, she provided the voice of Penny in the American Dad! episode "Stan's Best Friend" and appeared in an episode of 30 Rock titled "My Whole Life Is Thunder." Martin appeared in Night at the Museum 3 and Hulu's original series, Difficult People, starring Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner, and produced by Amy Poehler. It premiered August 5, 2015. She played Prudy Pingleton on Hairspray Live!, which aired on December 7, 2016.
Martin tours throughout Canada and the United States in her one-woman show, Andrea Martin: Final Days, Everything Must Go! with her musical director Seth Rudetsky.
In 2018, Martin, along with fellow Canadians Seth Rogen and Leonard Cohen, was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.[28]
Martin was set to perform on Broadway opposite Nathan Lane beginning March 2019 in the world premiere of Taylor Mac's new comedy Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, directed by George C. Wolfe. On March 4, 2019, Martin withdrew from the production, having broken four ribs in an accident during rehearsal.[29]
In 2024, Martin appeared on Broadway, in the Lincoln Center production of Ayad Akhtar's McNeal, along with Robert Downey Jr., who played the title character.[30]
Personal life
Martin divides her time between Los Angeles and Toronto. On December 8, 2017, on The Marilyn Denis Show, Martin announced that after 47 years in Canada, she had become a Canadian citizen. She was previously married to Bob Dolman and had two sons with him, Joe and Jack. She has a grandchild via her elder son.[31] Through her marriage to Dolman, she was the sister-in-law of actor/comedian Martin Short, who married Dolman's sister Nancy.
^"John Papazian Martin". Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. November 17, 2010. Retrieved August 28, 2022 – via Legacy.com.
^Routher, Ray (April 28, 2002). "Doing OK". Maine Sunday Telegram. Portland, Maine. p. 1E. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2011.
^"Our History". Armenians of Maine. Retrieved August 22, 2023. In 1910 an Armenian school was organized at 159 Lancaster Street. It had 22 students in 1922.
^ abCohen, Fritzi (June 1987). "Funny Girl:...Or What to do With Your Life if You're Miss Deering High 1965..."(PDF). Portland Monthly. Vol. 2, no. 5. pp. 13–19. I've known you all your life, Andrea. From the time your mother used to walk you in your carriage as a baby until you graduated from Deering High School in 1965, we always lived within three blocks of each other.
^Henderson, Kathy."Andrea Martin" broadway.com, December 17, 2007
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw"Andrea Martin (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved August 2, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Andrea Martin.
