Steve Martin

At 79 years old, Steve Martin has this physical status:

Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, essayist, and singer.

Martin first appeared on public display in the 1960s as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and later as a frequent guest on The Tonight Show.

Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines in the 1970s before packed houses on national tours.

Martin has been a successful actor, writer, actor, and banjo player, among other accolades, since being pushed away from comedy in the 1980s, including Emmy, Grammy, and American Comedy awards. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin sixth in a list of the 100 best stand-up comedians in the United States.

In 2013, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his early years and included music in his comedy routines from the start of his professional career, dedicating a large portion of his personal life to music, including Earl Scruggs, with whom he received a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2002.

In 2009, he released The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, his first solo music collection for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.

Early life and education

Martin was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Mary Lee (née Stewart; 1913–2002) and Glenn Vernon Martin (1914–1997), a real estate salesman and aspiring actor. Melinda is his older sister.

Martin is of English, Scottish, Welsh, Scots-Irish, German, and French descent, and was born in Inglewood, California, and later in Garden Grove, California, in a Baptist family. Martin was a cheerleader at Garden Grove High School. At the Call Board Theatre on Melrose Place, one of his earliest memories is of his father as an extra. Martin's father appeared in a production of Our Town with Raymond Massey during World War II in the United Kingdom. Martin's father was stern but not emotionally connected to his son, expressing his love through gifts, like cars and bikes. He was proud but critical, with Martin later recalling that his feelings for his father were mainly of mistrust in his youth.

During Martin's first summer break, he worked at Disneyland, selling guidebooks on weekends and full-time. It lasted for three years (1955–1958). He went to the Main Street Magic store, where tricks were demonstrated to customers during his free hours. He was shot in the background of the home movie that was turned into the short-subject film Disneyland Dream, which was also his first film appearance. He had mastered many magical tricks and illusions by 1960 and took up a regular job at the Magic Shop in Fantasyland in August. He perfected his magic, juggling, and making balloon animals in the style of mentor Wally Boag, who is often on display for tips.

Martin could "most accurately be described as an agnostic," according to close friend Morris Walker, "he seldom went to worship and was never interested in formal faith of his own volition." Martin dated Melissa Trumbo, the niece of novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's daughter.

Martin attended Santa Ana College, taking drama and English poetry classes. In his spare time, he joined up with friend and Garden Grove High School classmate Kathy Westmoreland to participate in comedies and other performances at the Bird Cage Theatre. At Knott's Berry Farm, he performed a comedy troupe. Stormie Sherk, a budding actress, and the pair developed comedy routines and became intimately involved. Martin landed on Martin to apply for a philosophy major at the California State University, Long Beach. Sherk came from UCLA, about an hour's drive north, and the distance eventually drove them to separate lives.

Martin considered becoming a scholar rather than an actor-comedian, inspired by his philosophy classes. His time at college changed his life.

Martin recalls reading a treatise on comedy that prompted him to reflect:

In his 1970s stand-up act, Martin spoofed his philosophy experiments by comparing philosophy to geology, and geology is compared.

Martin migrated to UCLA in 1967 and shifted his attention to theater. He appeared in an episode of The Dating Game while attending college, winning a date with Deana Martin. Martin began teaching local clubs at night, to mixed messages, and at twenty-one, he dropped out of college.

Personal life

Martin was in a love with Bernadette Peters, with whom he co-starred in The Jerk and Pennies from Heaven in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mary Tyler Moore and Karen Carpenter were both dated. Martin married actress Victoria Tennant, with whom he co-starred in All of Me and L.A.'s Story on November 20, 1986. In 1994, the two families divorced.

During Operation Desert Storm, Martin went on a USO Tour to Saudi Arabia from October 14 to 21, 1990. Martin met with military service men and women from all around the region, autographing thousands of autographs and posing for photographs. "Everybody is here, giving up a portion of their lives in exchange for this cause." "So I came" had some time off, and I felt really sad just sitting there.

Anne Stringfield, a former New Yorker staff member, married Martin on July 28, 2007. Bob Kerry presided over the Los Angeles home of Martin. Lorne Michaels was voted Best Man of the United States by a jury. Several guests, who had been warned of a party, were taken aback by the nuptials. Martin became a father in December 2012 after Stringfield gave birth to a daughter.

Since buying a print by Ed Ruscha in 1968, Martin has been an avid art collector. The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art held a five-month retrospective exhibition of twenty-eight works from Martin's collection, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, and Edward Hopper. He sold Hopper's Hotel Window (1955) at Sotheby's for $26.8 million in 2006. He curated a show "The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris" in 2015 to introduce Americans to Canadian painter and Group of Seven co-founder Lawren Harris.

Martin purchased what seemed to be Landschaft mit Pferden (Landscape with Horses), a 1915 work by Heinrich Campendonk, in July 2004, from a Paris gallery for about €700,000. The painting was sold at Christie's auction to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000, fifteen months later. According to investigators, the fake Campendonk was made from a collection curated by a German forgery ring led by Wolfgang Beltracchi, whose works had been sold to French galleries. Martin was shocked to learn that the painting had been fake many years before it had been auctioned. Martin said the Beltracchis were "very clever in that they gave it a long history and faked labels," and that it came out of a collection of legitimate photographs with faked images."

Martin served on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's board of trustees from 1984 to 2004. Martin was instrumental in the establishment of the National Endowment for Indigenous Visual Arts (NEIVA), a fund that will assist Australian Indigenous artists in 2021. Martin has long supported Indigenous Australian painting. "Desert Painters of Australia," George Tjungurrayi and Emily Kame Kngwarreye's artwork on display, was on display at Gagosian Gallery in 2019.

Martin is suffering from tinnitus, although the condition was first attributed to the shooting of a pistol-shooting scene for Three Amigos in 1986, but Martin later confirmed that the tinnitus was caused by years of listening to loud music and performing in front of packed audiences.

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Career

Nina Goldblatt, a performer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, aided Martin in landing a writing position with the show by submitting his work to head writer Mason Williams in 1967. Williams started paying Martin out of his own pocket. Martin, co-writers on the show, received an Emmy Award in 1969 at the age of twenty-three. He wrote for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Martin's first television appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedian Comedy Hour in 1968 was on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

He says:

Gary Mule Deer and Michael Johnson were among Gary Mule Deer and Michael Johnson's classmates in those years. Martin joked to Tommy Smothers for use on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour program, Gary Mule Deer delivered the first joke on display on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour show. Martin opened for groups including The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (who earned the spotlight by appearing in his 1980 television special All Commercials), The Carpenters, and Toto. He appeared at The Boarding House, among other places. He continued to write, winning an Emmy Award for his 1976 work on Van Dyke and Company.

Martin appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, HBO's On Location, The Muppet Show, and NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL). When he made guest appearances on SNL, the audience soared by a million viewers, and he was one of the show's most popular hosts. Martin has appeared on twenty-seven Saturday Night Live shows and guest-hosted fifteen times, second only to Alec Baldwin, who has hosted seventeen times as of February 2017. Martin patented the air quotes gesture on the program. Although on the show, Martin grew close to several cast members, including Gilda Radner. She died of ovarian cancer on the night, and Martin hosted SNL and featured video of himself and Radner together in a 1978 sketch.

His television appearances in the 1970s paved the way for the introduction of comedy albums that went platinum. On his first album, Let's Get Small (1977), Excuse Me" helped create a national catch phrase. His second album, A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978), was a huge hit, achieving the No. 2 position. Over a million copies have been sold over the United States' top-selling charts, with over 2nd place on the US sales chart. "Just a wild and crazy guy" became Martin's most popular catchphrase. The album featured a character based on a series of Saturday Night Live sketches in which Martin and Dan Aykroyd played the Festrunk Brothers; Yortuk and Georgi were bumbling Czechoslovak would-be playboys. The album concludes with the song "King Tut," performed and written by Martin and backed by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Toot Uncommons." It was later announced as a single, debuting No. 1 at No. In 1978, 17 appeared on the US charts, with over a million copies selling over. The performance came out during King Tut's craze, which coincided with the popular traveling display of Egypt's tomb artifacts. Both albums received Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978, respectively. On April 22, 1978, Martin appeared on "King Tut" on the SNL show "King Tut."

The A.V. was published in 2012, ten years later. Martin's distinctive style and its effect on audiences were described by the club:

Martin's stand-up on his comedy albums is both self-referential and occasionally self-mocking. It mixes philosophical rebutts with sudden spurts of "good feet," banjo playing with balloon representations of terms such as venereal disease and "controversial" kitten juggling (he is a master juggler; the "kittens" were stuffed animals). His style is off-kilter and ironic, and he occasionally mocks stand-up comedy styles, such as Martin opening his show (from A Wild and Crazy Guy) by stating:

Or, "I'm Steve Martin, and I'll be out in a minute." Comedy Is Not Pretty was used in a one-comedy routine on the Comedian Is Not Pretty show. Martin said on the album that his real name was "Gern Blanston." The riff took on a life of its own. There is a Gern Blanston website, but for a time a rock band took the moniker as its name.

Martin's show attracted full stadiums for the audiences he was attracted. Martin began to wear a three-piece white suit, which became a design feature for his act, being worried about his exposure in places on such a large scale. Martin ceased doing stand-up comedy in 1981 to focus on movies and did not return for thirty-five years. "My act was conceptual," he says of this decision. It was done when the idea was first introduced, and everybody understood it. ... It was about coming to an end of the road. There was no way to live in that persona. I had to have the great fortune of not being remembered as such. Well, I didn't announce that I was going to be out. "I just stopped."

Martin performed a low-key return to live comedy in 2016, opening for Jerry Seinfeld. He did a ten-minute stand-up routine before handing over the stage to Seinfeld. In 2016, he produced a national tour with Martin Short and the Steep Canyon Rangers, which culminated in the creation of a Netflix comedy special called Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Would Forget for the Rest of Your Life. Martin received two awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and Outstanding Music and Lyrics for his Buddy Song, according to four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Martin had acquired the sort of following by the 1970s, with his tour shows mainly sold out arenas packed with tens of thousands of screaming fans. But stand-up comedy was "just an accident" for him; his true aim was to get into film, but not to his audience;

Martin appeared in Another Nice Mess, a 1972 film. He appeared in the Canadian travelogue film The Funnier Side Of Eastern Canada, which also included standup segments shot at the Ice House in Pasadena, California, in 1974. In a short film called The Absent-Minded Waiter (1977), he made his first serious film appearance. Buck Henry and Teri Garr were also included in the seven-minute film, which was also starring Teri Garr and Terry Garr. Martin wrote and directed the film. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Short Film, Live Action. He made his first major film appearance in the musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where he performed "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" on The Beatles, is performed by Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Martin appeared in the comedy film The Jerk, directed by Carl Reiner, and written by Martin, Michael Elias, and Carl Gottlieb in 1979. The film was a huge success, grossing over $100 million on a budget of less than $4 million.

Stanley Kubrick talked to him about the prospect that Martin would appear in a screwball comedy version of Traumaticelle (Kubrick later modified his approach to the film, the result of which was 1999's Eyes Wide Shut). Martin was executive producer for Domestic Life, a prime-time television series starring Martin Mull, as well as a late-night television series called Twilight Theater. Martin was compelled to try his hand at his first serious film, Pennies from Heaven (1981), based on Dennis Potter's 1978 BBC serial. Because of his desire not to be typecast, he was eager to appear in the film. Martin took acting lessons from director Herbert Ross and spent months learning how to tap dance in order to prepare for the film. The film was a financial loss; Martin's remark at the time was: "I don't know what to blame other than me and not a comedy."

Since The Jerk: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in 1982, The Man with Two Brains in 1983, and All of Me in 1984, Martin's most critically acclaimed performance to date. Martin was by now on almost $3 million per film, but Plaid and Two Brains failed at the box office, as well as Pennies, ending his young career. Martin Short and Chevy Chase were among the founding members of Saturday Night Live in 1986, directed by John Landis and written by Martin, Lorne Michaels and singer-songwriter Randy Newman. The Three Caballeros and Martin had been planned to be teamed with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, and it was originally named The Three Caballeros and Martin. Martin appeared in the hit Off-Broadway film version of the hit film Little Shop of Horrors in 1986, portraying Orin Scrivello, the sadistic dentist. Martin Moranis appeared in the first of three films teaming him. Martin appeared in John Candy's John Candy's film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles from 1987. Roxanne, Martin co-wrote's film adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, earned him the Writers Guild of America Award that same year. It earned Hollywood and public recognition that he was more than a comedian. In 1988, he appeared in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a Bedtime Story reimaginal, alongside Michael Caine. In 1988, he appeared at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in a revival of Waiting for Godot directed by Mike Nichols. With Robin Williams as Estragon and Bill Irwin as Lucky, he played Vladimir. In 1989, Martin appeared in the Ron Howard film Parenthood with Rick Moranis.

In the Mafia film My Blue Heaven (1990), he re-teamed with Moranis. Martin appeared and wrote L.A. Story, a romantic comedy in which the female lead was played by his then-wife Victoria Tennant. Martin also appeared in Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon, in which he portrayed Davis, the tightly wound Hollywood film producer who was recovering from a devastating shootout that left him injured, a more serious role for him. Martin appeared in a remake of the Father of the Bride in 1991 (followed by a sequel in 1995) and in the 1992 comedy Housesitter, with Goldie Hawn and Dana Delany. In 1994, he appeared in A Simple Twist of Fate, a film adaptation of Silas Marner.

Martin played a darker role in David Mamet's 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner, as a wealthy stranger with a skepticism about a young businessman's involvement in the affairs of a young businessman. (Campbell Scott). He went on to star Eddie Murphy in the 1999 comedy Bowfinger, which Martin also wrote.

Martin guest appeared in the 200th episode of The Simpsons titled "Trash of the Titans" in 1998, providing the voice for sanitation commissioner Ray Patterson. Martin and Hawn appeared in a re-imagination of the 1970 Neil Simon comedy The Out-of-Towners.

After appearing in Bringing Down The House (2003) and Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), each of which earned over $130 million at American theaters, Martin came fourth on the box office actors list in 2003. In the animation/live action mix Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he appeared as Mr. Chairman the previous year. Martin wrote and starred in Shopgirl, based on his own bookla (2000), and appeared in Cheaper by the Dozen 2. In 2006, he appeared in The Pink Panther as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. In 2009's The Pink Panther 2, he reprised his role. When combined, the two films earned more than $230 million at the box office.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Martin appeared in the comedy Baby Mama (2008), in which the founder of a health food business was portrayed. In the episode Gavin Volure, Martin appeared as a guest star in 30 Rock as Gavin Volure. In a Comedy Series, he was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor. He appeared in Nancy Meyers' comprehensive comedy It's Complicated (2009), opposite Meryl Sting and Alec Baldwin, for the first year. Martin was named one of the best actors never to receive an Academy Award in 2009, according to a Guardian article.

Martin sparsely appeared on film and television during the 2010s. In 2011, he appeared with Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and JoBeth Williams in the birdwatching film The Big Year, directed by David Frankel. The film was criticized for its lighthearted tale and was a box office bomb. Martin returned in 2015 after a three-year absence when he appeared in the DreamWorks animated film Home alongside Jim Parsons and Rihanna. The film received mixed critical reception, but it was a financial success. He appeared in Ang Lee's Long Halftime Walk in 2016. In 2016, he appeared in Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. He appeared on the taped version of Oh, Hello on Broadway (2017) as the guest. With Martin Short in 2018, he appeared in the Netflix comedy special An Evening You Will Forget the Rest of Your Life.

Martin opened the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020 alongside Chris Rock with comedic comedy. They had not been confirmed as the host of the event, and they mused after the opening monologue: "Well, we had a great time not hosting tonight." Martin in 2020 reprised his role as George Banks in the short Father of the Bride, Part 3 (ish). Martin appears in and is an executive producer of Only Murders in the Building, a Hulu comedy series developed by John Hoffman and Martin Short and Selena Gomez. Martin said in August 2022 that the series would likely be his last role, and that he does not intend to seek out cameos or cameos for other shows or films after the series ends.

In 1993, Martin wrote Picasso at the Lapin Agile, his first full-length play. The first reading of the play took place in Beverly Hills, California, with Tom Hanks reading Pablo Picasso's role and Chris Sarandon reading Albert Einstein's role. Following this, the performance was staged at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and then went on to perform in Los Angeles, New York City, and several other American cities. After many parents complained about the program, the school board in La Grande, Oregon, refused to allow the play to be performed in 2009. Martin wrote an open letter in the local Observer newspaper, saying: "Martin wrote: I think you are correct."

Martin wrote various pieces for The New Yorker in the 1990s. He adapted the Carl Sternheim play The Underpants, which appeared on Broadway at Classic Stage Company in 2002, and Traitor, starring Don Cheadle, starred Don Cheadle, co-wrote and produced Traitor in 2008. He has also written the novellas Shopgirl (2000) and The Pleasure of My Company (2003), which are both more wry in tone than raucous. The work of a 28-year-old woman behind the glove counter at the Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills, Shopgirl, was turned into a film starring Martin and Claire Danes. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2005 and was shown at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival before being restricted to limited release in the United States. Born Standing Up, He wrote a memoir in 2007, which Time magazine named it as one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranked No. 2 in 2007. "A funny, touching, and remarkably open memoir," the author describes it. He wrote The An Object of Beauty in 2010.

Martin has worked with cartoonist Harry Bliss as a writer for the syndicated single-panel comic Bliss, which began in 2019. They also published A Wealth of Pigeons, a cartoon collection that was released together. Number One is Walking, a fictional biography by Martin, collaborated again in 2022 for Martin's illustrated biography.

Martin and Edie Brickell coproduced on Bright Star, his first musical inspired by Love has Come for You. It was set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in 1945–46, with flashbacks to 1923. On March 24, 2016, the musical premiered on Broadway. "The winning combination of the musical is its winsome country and bluegrass score, with music by Mr. Martin and Ms. Brickell, and lyrics by Ms. Brickell, provide the musical's dynamism that keeps the momentum from stalling," Charles Isherwood of The New York Times lauded." The musical went on to win five Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. Martin himself received Tony nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score, as well as the Outstanding Critics Circle Award for Best New Score and Outstanding Achievement. He has also been nominated for Best Musical Theater Album by the Academy of Recordings.

Martin's next performance as a playwright was the comedy play Meteor Shower, which opened at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in August 2016 and then went to the Long Wharf Theatre in Connecticut later this year. On November 29, 2017, the play opened on Broadway at the Booth Theater on Broadway. Amy Schumer, Laura Benanti, Jeremy Shamos, and Keegan-Michael Key appear on the program, as did Jerry Zaks, with direction by Jerry Zaks. "Meteor Shower is a very funny game," Entertainment Weekly's Allison Adaot wrote. A keening-like-a-howler-monkey parody. The design-a-new-cry-emoji funny... The premise is polished to sparkle in the capable hands of writer and comedy master Steve Martin.

In 2001 and 2003, Martin hosted the Academy Awards solo, as well as in 2010 with Alec Baldwin. Martin co-hosted Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years in 2005, commemorating the park's centennial. The show stayed on until March 2009, but now appears in the lobby of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

Parrot Sketch Not Included (1989): In 1989, a Monty Python fan, Martin hosted the television special Parrot Sketch Not Included – 20 Years of Monty Python.

Martin first picked up the banjo when he was 17 years old. Martin has said in various interviews and book titled Born Standing Up that he used to play 33 rpm bluegrass records and tune their banjo down to 16 rpm, so the notes would look the same. Martin was able to pick out every note and perfect his playing. Martin learned how to play the banjo with the help of John McEuen, who later joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Later in life, McEuen's brother also supervised Martin and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In the early 1970s, Martin performed his stand-up routine opening for the band. "King Tut," the band's hit song, was dubbed "The Toot Uncommons" (as in Tutankhamun). The banjo was a staple of Martin's stand-up days, and he spoofered it on occasion.

On the Comedy Is Not Pretty!

"Drop Thumb Medley," the singer's all-instrumental jam, was included on his 1979 concert tour. One of Martin's more popular stand-up comedy, The Steve Martin Brothers (1981), featured one half of the band's classic stand-up comedy, while the other half featured live performances of Steve playing banjo with a bluegrass band.

On Earl Scruggs' remake of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" in 2001, he appeared on banjo. At the Grammy Awards of 2002, the album was rated as the Best Country Instrumental Performance category. During a show in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Martin appeared with the band In the Minds of the Living in 2008. Martin's first all-music collection, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, featured artists such as Dolly Parton. In 2010, the album received the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. The album was produced by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member John McEuen. Martin appeared on The Grand Ole Opry for the first time on May 30, 2009. He appeared in the American Idol season eight finals with Michael Sarver and Megan Joy in the song "Pretty Flowers."

Martin played banjo with the Steep Canyon Rangers on A Prairie Home Companion in June 2009 and began a two-month tour with the Rangers in September, including appearances at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Carnegie Hall, and Benaroya Hall in Seattle. They continued to play at the Royal Festival Hall in London in November with Mary Black's help. Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers performed at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, at the ROMP Bluegrass Festival, and later today on the BBC's Later... With Jools Holland. On "Jubilation Day" with the Steep Canyon Rangers on The Colbert Report on Conan on May 21, 2011, and on BBC's The One Show on July 6, 2011. On the lawn of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., Martin performed "Me and Paul Revere," a song he wrote on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on the fourth anniversary of the "Capitol Fourth Celebration" on July 4, 2011. Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers occasionally performed Martin's 1978 novelty hit song "King Tut" live in a bluegrass arrangement when on tour. One of these performances was included on the 2011 album Rare Bird Alert. Martin was also interviewed and appeared in the PBS film "Give Me The Banjo" chronicling the banjo's history in America in 2011.

Love Has Come for You, a collaboration album with Edie Brickell, was released in April 2013. From TV shows like The View and Late Show with David Letterman, the two performed musical guest appearances to promote the album. The title track received the Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song. He began touring with the Steep Canyon Rangers and Edie Brickell throughout the United States in May 2013. So Familiar, Brickell and Martin's second installment of their relationship, was released in 2015. Martin and Brickell appeared in Bernard MacMahon's multi-award documentary film The American Epic Sessions in 2017. They performed a live version of "The Coo Bird," a classic song that Martin learned from the 1960s folk music group The Holy Modal Rounders, which was recorded direct to disc on the first electrical sound recording device from the 1920s. On the film soundtrack, Music from The American Epic Sessions was released on June 9, 2017.

Martin founded the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass in 2010, an award that was established to honor artistry and bring greater exposure to bluegrass performers. The prize includes a US$50,000 cash award, a bronze sculpture made by artist Eric Fischl, and a chance to appear with Martin on Late Show with David Letterman. Noam Pikelny of the Punch Brothers Band (2010), Sammy Shelor of Lonesome River Band (2011), Mark Johnson (2013), Eddie Adcock (2014), Danny Barnes (2015), Kristin Scott Benson (2018), and Victor Furtado (2019).

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