Working as a Disneyland concessionaire in his teens, American comedian Steve Martin picked up skills in "a little of this, a little of that:" juggling, tapdancing, sleight of hand, balloon sculpting. Martin then attended UCLA, where he majored in philosophy and theatre, moving on to staff-writer stints for such TV performers as Glen Campbell, The Smothers Brothers, Dick Van Dyke, John Denver, and Sonny and Cher. Occasionally allowed to perform as well as write, Martin didn't go into standup comedy full time until the late 1960s, at which time he moved to Canada, where he appeared as semi-regular on the syndicated TV variety series Half the George Kirby Comedy Hour. As the opening act for rock stars in the early 1970s, Martin emulated the fashion of the era with a full beard, shaggy hair, colorful costumes and drug jokes. Comedians of this ilk were common in this market, however, so Martin carefully developed a brand-new persona: the well groomed, immaculately dressed young man who goes against his appearance by behaving like a lunatic. By 1975, Martin was the Comic of the Hour, convulsing audiences with his feigned enthusiasm over the weakest of jokes and the most obvious of comedy props (rabbit ears, head arrows). His entire act a devastating parody of second-rate comedians who rely on preconditioning to get laughs, Martin became internationally famous for such catchphrases as "Excu-u-use me!," "Happy feet!," and "I am...one wild and crazy guy!" It was fun for a while to hear audiences shout out those catchphrases before he'd uttered them, but before long Martin was tired of live standup and anxious to get into films. Ignoring the execrable Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1977), Martin's true screen bow was The Jerk (1979), in which with the seriousness of an Olivier he portrayed a man without a single clue in his brain, a white man who was a self-described "poor black child," an accidental millionaire who truly believed that his status rested upon his ability to order mixed drinks with little umbrellas in the glass. Had he been a lesser performer, Martin could have played variations on The Jerk for the remainder of his life, but his was a restless muse ever seeking out new challenges. It took nerve to go against the sensibilities of his fans with an on-edge portrayal of a habitual loser in Pennies from Heaven (1981), but Martin was successful, even if the film wasn't. And few other actors could convincingly pull off a project like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1983), wherein with utter conviction he acted opposite film clips of dead movie stars. After a first-rate turn in All of Me (1984), in which with he played a man whose body is inhabited by the soul of a woman, Martin's film work began to fluctuate in quality, only to emerge on top again with Roxanne (1987), a potentially silly but ultimately compelling update of Cyrano de Bergerac. With as many hits and misses in the late 1980s-early 1990s, Steve Martin was still full of surprises, as witnessed in his unsympathetic portrayal in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1989), his angst-ridden father in Parenthood (1989), and his self-justifying porno filmaker in Grand Canyon (1991) -- though the public still seems to prefer his standard comic performances in Father of the Bride (1991) and L.A. Story (1991). In real life hardly wild or crazy but a man of tasteful intellectual pursuits (including an extensive art collection), Martin briefly altered his most-eligible-bachelor status with a marriage to his L.A. Story co-star Victoria Tennant after a long romance with actress Bernadette Peters. More recently, Martin went out on yet another artistic limb with A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) -- a film updating of that high-school English class perennial Silas Marner.