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Producer · Actor · Writer

1950-03-26 · Hamilton, Ontario, Canada · Male

62 series in the catalog

Martin Hayter Short (born March 26, 1950) is a Canadian comedian, actor, singer, and writer. He is known as an energetic comedian who gained prominence for his roles in sketch comedy. He has also acted in numerous films and television shows. His awards include two Primetime Emmy Awards, two SAG Best Actor Awards, and a Tony Award. Short was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 2019.

Short is known for his work on the television programs SCTV and Saturday Night Live. He created the characters Jiminy Glick and Ed Grimley. He acted in the sitcom Mulaney (2014–2015), the variety series Maya & Marty (2016), and the drama series The Morning Show (2019). He has also had an active career on stage, starring in Broadway productions including Neil Simon's musicals The Goodbye Girl (1993) and Little Me (1998–1999). The latter earned him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and the former a nomination in the same category.

Short has acted in comedy films such as Three Amigos (1986), Innerspace (1987), Three Fugitives (1989), Father of the Bride (1991), Captain Ron (1992), Clifford (1994), Father of the Bride Part II (1995), Mars Attacks! (1996), Jungle 2 Jungle (1997), Mumford (1999), and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006). He voiced roles in The Pebble and the Penguin (1995), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012), Frankenweenie (2012), and The Wind Rises (2013). He also voiced the Cat in the Hat in the PBS Kids series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! (2010–2013).

In 2015, Short started touring nationally with the comedian Steve Martin. In 2018, they released their Netflix special An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life, which received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Since 2021, Short has co-starred in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building with Martin and Selena Gomez. For his performance he has earned nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and a Critics' Choice Television Award, and won a SAG Award.

Early life and education

Short was born Martin Hayter Short on March 26, 1950, in Hamilton, Ontario, the youngest of five children of Olive Grace (née Hayter), a Canadian-born concertmistress of the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra, and Charles Patrick Short, a corporate executive at the Canadian steel company Stelco, who had emigrated from Crossmaglen, Northern Ireland, as a stowaway during the Irish War of Independence. Short has described his father's heavy drinking.

Short and his siblings—David, Michael, Brian, and Nora—were raised as Catholics. His eldest brother, David, was killed in a car accident in Montreal in 1962, when Short was 12.

Encouraged by his mother in his early creative endeavours, Short attended Westdale Secondary School and graduated from McMaster University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social work in 1971. In the meantime, his mother died of cancer in 1968 and his father died two years later of complications from a stroke.

His brother, Michael, became a comedy writer, also spending time at Second City Television (SCTV), and is a 17-time nominee and three-time winner of an Emmy Award for comedy sketch writing.

Career

1972–1976: Early theatrical and Canadian television work

Just as Short was about to graduate from McMaster University, he moved to Toronto to temporarily give acting a shot rather than immediately pursue a career in social work. Right away, in March 1972, he landed his first piece of paid work as an actor, playing a plastic credit card inside a woman's purse in a Chargex television commercial. He was then cast by Stephen Schwartz in the 1972 production of the Broadway hit Godspell at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre. Among other members of that production's cast were Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Jayne Eastwood, and Gerry Salsberg. Paul Shaffer was the musical director. As Short wrote in his 2014 memoir, he and Gilda Radner dated each other on and off during that time.

Short subsequently found work in several Canadian television shows and theatrical productions. These included being cast for the role of a tough and predatory prison inmate in the 1972 staging of John Herbert's drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. Appearing in this role involved the 21-year-old actor commuting to and from his hometown of Hamilton. By late 1972, with the success of Godspell at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in downtown Toronto, the production moved uptown to the Bayview Playhouse where it ran for 488 performances. Short's increased stage profile led to a guest spot on Right On, a teen-focused live program airing weekly in the after-school timeslot on the government-funded CBC TV. He also played the role of Smokey the Hare on the TVOntario daytime kids' program Cucumber.

In June 1973, with Godspell winding down and Chicago's Second City improv comedy theatre starting up a sister company in Toronto, many of Short's Godspell peers, including Radner, Levy, Eastwood, Salsberg, Valri Bromfield and Dan Aykroyd, joined the new troupe's first cast. Short resisted auditioning due to feeling a "phobia of being funny on demand" and considered himself a "traditional song-and-dance performer".

In 1974, Short was hired as a writer on Everything Goes, a nightly variety show hosted by Norm Crosby, Mike Darow and Catherine McKinnon. Produced and aired on the newly launched Global Television Network, the show was broadcast only to the Southern Ontario region and lasted less than six months before being cancelled.

1977–1985: SCTV and SNL stardom

Short was encouraged to pursue comedy by McMaster classmates Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas. In March 1977, Short joined the improvisation group the Second City in Toronto, taking over from John Candy in The Wizard of Ossington, their ninth revue.

In early 1978, Short secured his feature film debut via a supporting role in the Melvin Frank-directed British romantic comedy, Lost and Found, starring George Segal and Glenda Jackson. Filmed throughout the late winter and early spring of 1978 in Banff National Park and Toronto, the film saw a limited North American release in June 1979 and was met with lukewarm reviews and poor box office returns.

In 1979, after working solely in Canada for the previous seven years, Short landed a starring role in the American sitcom The Associates, about a group of novice lawyers working at a Wall Street law firm.

In 1980, he joined the cast of I'm a Big Girl Now, a sitcom starring Diana Canova and Danny Thomas. Canova was offered the sitcom because of her success playing Corinne Tate Flotsky on ABC's Soap and left Soap shortly before Short's newlywed wife Nancy Dolman joined it.

SCTV

Short achieved wider public notice when the Toronto Second City group produced a show for television, Second City Television (SCTV), which ran for several years in Canada and then later in the United States. Appearing on SCTV in 1982–83, Short developed several characters before moving on to Saturday Night Live for the 1984–85 season:

Aged songwriter Irving Cohen, previously thought to be loosely based on American composers Irving Caesar and/or Irving Berlin and perhaps Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, but actually (according to Short in his autobiography) inspired by Sophie Tucker

Defense attorney Nathan Thurm

Albino Vegas singer Jackie Rogers Jr. and his father, Jackie Rogers Sr., the latter of whom was mauled to death by a mountain lion during a comeback special that took place in the woods.

Oddball man-child Ed Grimley, later featured on SNL and in his own short-lived animated television series, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley. The show, which was produced by Hanna-Barbera, aired for a single season in the fall of 1988 and remains the only animated series adapted from both an SCTV and Saturday Night Live character to date.

Saturday Night Live

Short joined…