Steve Martin

Born on August 14, 1945, comic actor Steve Martin has had a long career in Hollywood feature films making people laugh but he is also an accomplished banjo player whose bluegrass performances and recordings are taken very seriously. After more than 30 years as a major movie star with hit films such as The Jerk, All of Me, Roxanne, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Father of the Bride and success as an author and screenwriter, he began to focus more on music in 2000. He had made popular comedy albums earlier in his career and he used to play the banjo in his stand-up act when he started out, but since the millennium he has won acclaim as a fully fledged musician. His 2009 release, The Crow: New Songs for the Five-string Banjo, won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and topped the Billboard Bluegrass Albums Chart. He had further number one bluegrass hits with singer-songwriter Edie Brickell and with The Steep Canyon Rangers. Born in Waco, Texas, he grew up in southern California where he worked as a teenager at Disneyland and learned to do magic tricks. Working in the park's Fantasyland magic shop, he learned to juggle and later joined a comedy troupe at Knott's Berry Farm theme park. While studying theatre at the University of Southern California he began to perform at local clubs and landed a writing job on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on national television. He debuted as a comedian on the show and launched his career as a stand-up comic with TV appearances on many shows including Saturday Night Live from the mid-1970s. He opened for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on tour and made his recording debut with the comedy album Let's Get Small, which went to number ten on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording in 1977. A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978) peaked at number two on the chart and also won him another Grammy. His movie career kicked off in 1979 with director Carl Reiner's The Jerk and the two worked together on Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983) and All of Me (1984). He became a top Hollywood star with features including Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Parenthood (1989), Sgt. Bilko (1996), Bowfinger (1999), Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and The Pink Panther (2006). He first played the banjo as a teenager and he used the instrument often in his stand-up until in 2001 bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs asked him to play on a new recording of his iconic hit "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", which won the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. He performed on The Grand Ole Opry and A Prairie Home Companion and played Carnegie Hall in New York and the Royal Festival Hall in London. He has played at bluegrass festivals and on many television shows in America and England. His recording, The Long-Awaited Album with The Steep Canyon Rangers, topped Billboard's Bluegrass Albums Chart in October 2017. In 2018, his music and comedy tour with fellow comic actor and performer Martin Short included appearances across the United States and Canada. In 2025, Martin duetted with Alison Brown for the album Safe, Sensible, and Sane.