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Andrea Martin Biography & Facts

Andrea Louise Martin (born January 15, 1947) is an American and Canadian actress, best known for her work in the television series SCTV and Great News. She has appeared in films such as Black Christmas (1974), Wag the Dog (1997), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016), and Little Italy (2018). She has also lent her voice to the animated films Anastasia (1997), The Rugrats Movie (1998), and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001). Since 2021, she co-stars in the supernatural drama series Evil. Martin has been equally prolific in the world of theater, winning Tony Awards for both My Favorite Year and the 2013 revival of Pippin. Martin also appeared on Broadway in Candide, Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, Young Frankenstein, Exit the King, and Act One. She has received five nominations for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, more than any other actress in the award's history. She received her first nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the 2016 revival of Noises Off. Early life Andrea Martin was born on January 15, 1947, in Portland, Maine, the eldest of three children of Armenian-American parents Sybil A. (Armenian: Սյբիլ մանօգիան մարտին; née Manoogian) and John Papazian Martin (Armenian: ձոհն պապազիան մարտին; 1917–2010). Her paternal grandparents were from Van, present-day Turkey, who had escaped the Armenian Genocide. Her maternal grandmother immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15. Her paternal grandfather, an amateur thespian, changed the family's name from Papazian to Martin. Her maternal grandparents, who were from Constantinople, started the Armenian School at the Chestnut Street Church in Portland, Maine. Andrea's father owned Martin's Foods, a grocery-store chain. 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. 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 Art Museum 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. 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. In 1972, Martin played the character Robin in a Toronto production of Godspell, with a company that included future stars Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Victor Garber, and musical director Paul Shaffer. Two of her early film roles were in horror films, 1973's Cannibal Girls, for which she won the Sitges Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and in 1974, as the bookish sorority sister Phyllis in Black Christmas, a Canadian slasher. In 1976, she joined then-unknowns John Candy, Dave Thomas, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, and Joe Flaherty on the Canadian sketch comedy television series, SCTV, which was set at fictional television station "Second City Television", or SCTV, in Melonville. Martin most notably portrayed leopard print-wearing station manager Edith Prickley, whose dealings with the staff, including president/owner Guy Caballero, clueless newscaster Earl Camembert, and washed-up actor Johnny LaRue, helped to provide much of the show's humor. Other notable characters Martin played included Pirini Scleroso, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, organ saleswoman Edna Boil, feminist TV show host Libby Wolfson, and children's entertainer Mrs. Falbo. Her talent for impersonation was key in her humorous portrayals of Barbra Streisand, Ethel Merman, Arlene Francis, Pauline Kael, Sally Field, Sophia Loren, Beverly Sills, Lynn Redgrave, Linda Lavin, Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli, Connie Francis, Mother Teresa, Joni Mitchell, Alice B. Toklas, Patti Smith, Brenda Vaccaro, and Indira Gandhi. In 1981, Martin was Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Variety Show for her work in SCTV. Her 1970s stage work eventually included the Toronto branch of the improvisational comedy troupe The Second City, a group which produced almost the entire cast of SCTV. In 1992, she made her Broadway debut in the musical My Favorite Year, for which she won the Tony Award, Theatre World Award, and Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. 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. 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, 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". 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. 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.... Discover the Andrea Martin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Andrea Martin books.