Martin Short

Martin Short (born March 26, 1950) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and writer whose defining work has almost always lived on television, where a character can be built, abandoned, and resurrected across decades. He is the rare performer who invented a personal repertory company inside his own body: the manic triangle-playing shut-in Ed Grimley, the chain-smoking evasive attorney Nathan Thurm, the ancient songwriter Irving Cohen, and the gloriously ignorant celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick. Short built all of them on sketch television, then carried them onto stages, into films, and back onto television again, which is why the television-led framing fits a career that also holds a Tony Award.

The arc runs from Toronto theatre in the early 1970s through SCTV, where he won a writing Emmy in 1983, into the 1984 to 1985 season of Saturday Night Live, which he is widely credited with re-energizing after Eddie Murphy left. Hollywood followed, and the film record is honest about what worked and what did not: Three Amigos!, Innerspace, and a scene-stealing Franck Eggelhoffer in Father of the Bride on one side, and a run of commercial misfires including Pure Luck, Captain Ron, and the famously savaged Clifford on the other. Broadway proved the more reliable home, delivering a Tony nomination for The Goodbye Girl in 1993 and a win for Little Me in 1999.

The late chapter has been the loudest one. Since 2021 Short has played broke, needy, magnificently self-regarding theatre director Oliver Putnam on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, a role that finally converted five decades of goodwill into hardware when he won his first individual SAG Award in 2025. He took over ABC’s Match Game in 2025, and in May 2026 Lawrence Kasdan’s Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short arrived carrying a title that had turned unbearably literal. Short spent the 2026 awards season absent from rooms where he was nominated, and then chose to promote the film anyway.

People also read: Steve Martin (Only Murders in the Building), Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada), Eugene Levy (Schitt’s Creek)

Quick Facts

Featured Video

Video courtesy of Netflix.

Early Life & Education

Short was born in Hamilton, Ontario, the youngest of five children in a household where comedy was the family currency. His father, Charles Patrick Short, was a corporate executive at the Canadian steel company Stelco who had emigrated from Crossmaglen, County Armagh, as a stowaway during the Irish War of Independence. His mother, Olive Grace Hayter, was concertmistress of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and she encouraged the performing instinct early. Short has described the household as a place where the point of a conversation was to make the other people at the table laugh, a competitive dynamic he later credited with shaping everything he does professionally.

That house was also visited by an unusual concentration of loss. His eldest brother, David, was killed in a car accident in Montreal in 1962, when Short was 12. His mother died of cancer in 1968, and his father died two years later of complications from a stroke. Short was 20, and he has been candid ever since that arriving at adulthood with that much information about mortality permanently altered his relationship to professional risk. He has said the stresses either empower a person or defeat them, and that in his case they made him braver onstage, because an audience that dislikes something is not a real emergency.

He attended Westdale Secondary School and then McMaster University in Hamilton, where he moved from pre-med to sociology and finally to social work, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1971. Acting was supposed to be a temporary detour. In March 1972 he took his first paid acting job, playing a plastic credit card inside a woman’s purse in a Chargex commercial, and shortly after that Stephen Schwartz cast him in the Toronto production of Godspell at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. The company included Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, and Jayne Eastwood, with Paul Shaffer as musical director. It also included Nancy Dolman, whom Short married in 1980. The social work career never happened. In March 1977 he joined Toronto’s Second City, taking over for John Candy in the company’s ninth revue, The Wizard of Ossington.

Career Highlights and Milestones

Short spent most of the 1970s working steadily and invisibly in Canadian television and theatre, including a writing job on the short-lived variety show Everything Goes and the role of Smokey the Hare on the TVOntario children’s program Cucumber. American work arrived in 1979 with a starring role in the Wall Street law firm sitcom The Associates, followed by I’m a Big Girl Now in 1980. Neither lasted. The breakthrough came when the Toronto Second City company turned itself into SCTV, and Short joined for the 1982 to 1983 stretch. Given room to build rather than merely to perform, he produced the characters that would follow him for forty years: Ed Grimley, Nathan Thurm, Irving Cohen, and the albino Vegas singer Jackie Rogers Jr. He shared the 1983 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program for the SCTV Network 90 episode “Sweeps Week.”

Saturday Night Live hired him for the 1984 to 1985 season, the last one produced by Dick Ebersol, and Short is generally credited with helping the show recover the audience it had lost after Eddie Murphy’s departure. He brought Grimley and Thurm with him and added Jerry Lewis and Katharine Hepburn impressions. One season was enough to make him a movie star, and the films came quickly: Three Amigos! (1986) with Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, Joe Dante’s Innerspace (1987), Three Fugitives (1989), and the role that turned into a permanent piece of pop culture, the incomprehensible wedding planner Franck Eggelhoffer in Father of the Bride (1991) and its 1995 sequel. The rest of that run is less flattering, and the record deserves the honesty: Pure Luck (1991), Captain Ron (1992), and above all Clifford (1994), in which the 43-year-old Short played a 10-year-old boy, arrived to reviews and box office bad enough to stall his leading-man career. Clifford has since acquired a genuine cult following, which is its own kind of vindication, but it did not feel that way at the time.

Broadway proved the steadier partner. He earned a Tony nomination and an Outer Critics Circle Award for the 1993 musical The Goodbye Girl, then won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for the 1998 to 1999 revival of Little Me, a Neil Simon show that required him to play a gallery of characters and to sing and dance through all of them. He took over Leo Bloom opposite Jason Alexander in the 2003 Los Angeles run of The Producers, a role Mel Brooks had wanted him for on Broadway and which Short turned down rather than move his family to New York for a year. In 2006 he brought his own material to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre with Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, a one-man show in which Jiminy Glick interviewed a celebrity plucked from the audience each night, Jerry Seinfeld first among them. Alongside the stage work he built a second career as a voice actor across The Prince of Egypt, Treasure Planet, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Frankenweenie, and the PBS Kids series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, and a third, quieter one as a dramatic actor, earning Emmy nominations for the miniseries Merlin, the FX legal drama Damages, and a genuinely unsettling turn as disgraced filmmaker Dick Lundy on Apple TV+’s The Morning Show.

The current era began with a road show. Short and Steve Martin started touring together in 2015 under a rotating series of deliberately stupid titles, from A Very Stupid Conversation to The Funniest Show in Town at the Moment, and their 2017 tour became the Netflix special An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life, which drew four Emmy nominations. That partnership fed directly into Only Murders in the Building, the Hulu series co-created by Martin and John Hoffman that has run since 2021 with Short as Oliver Putnam and Selena Gomez as Mabel Mora. Short has been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series repeatedly, and in February 2025 he finally won an individual SAG Award, his first, on a night when the ensemble won as well and neither he nor Martin was in the room. He took over ABC’s Match Game in July 2025 as host and executive producer. In May 2026 Netflix released Lawrence Kasdan’s Marty, Life Is Short, and in July 2026 the Television Academy handed Short a genuinely strange trifecta: a lead comedy actor nomination for Only Murders, a game show host nomination for Match Game, and a documentary special nomination for the film about him.

Selected film and TV highlights

• Godspell (Toronto stage, 1972)
• The Associates (1979)
• SCTV Network 90 (1982 to 1983)
• Saturday Night Live (1984 to 1985)
• Three Amigos! (1986)
• Innerspace (1987)
• Father of the Bride (1991)
• The Goodbye Girl (Broadway, 1993)
• Clifford (1994)
• Mars Attacks! (1996)
• Little Me (Broadway, 1998 to 1999)
• Primetime Glick (2001 to 2003)
• Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me (Broadway, 2006)
• Damages (2010)
• The Morning Show (2019 to 2021)
• Only Murders in the Building (2021 to present)
• Match Game (2025 to present)

Major recognition

• Primetime Emmy Award, Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program, for SCTV Network 90 (won, 1983)
• Tony Award, Best Actor in a Musical, for Little Me (won, 1999), plus an Outer Critics Circle Award for the same production
• Tony Award nomination, Best Actor in a Musical, for The Goodbye Girl (1993), with an Outer Critics Circle Award win
• Primetime Emmy Award, Outstanding Variety Special, as a producer of AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Mel Brooks (won, 2014)
• Robert Altman Award, Independent Spirit Awards, shared with the ensemble of Inherent Vice (won)
• Screen Actors Guild Award, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series, for Only Murders in the Building (won, 2025), his first individual SAG win
• Screen Actors Guild Award, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, for Only Murders in the Building (won, 2025)
• Officer of the Order of Canada (2019), having first received the Order of Canada in 1994
• Star on Canada’s Walk of Fame (2000), plus a second star in 2002 as part of the SCTV company
• Canadian Screen Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2016)
• Sixteen Primetime Emmy nominations before the 2026 slate, across writing, variety, comedy, and drama categories

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Awards and Accolades

Filmography / Notable Works

Net Worth, Income, & Lifestyle

Social Media & Online Presence

Fan communities on social media (unofficial)

NOTE: In addition to any official accounts listed above, many fan-run pages and clip accounts exist across platforms. These are not confirmed to be affiliated with Martin Short. Links and usernames can change at any time.

Trivia & Lesser-Known Facts

• His first paid acting job, in March 1972, was a Chargex television commercial in which he played a plastic credit card sitting inside a woman’s purse.
• He graduated from McMaster University with a degree in social work and intended to practise. The Toronto production of Godspell interrupted the plan permanently, and the cast list explains why: Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer as musical director.
• Ed Grimley is the only character to have originated on both SCTV and Saturday Night Live and then been spun off into his own animated series, the Hanna-Barbera production The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, which ran for a single season in 1988.
• Mel Brooks wanted him as the original Leo Bloom in The Producers on Broadway opposite Nathan Lane. Short turned it down rather than relocate his family to New York for a year, and took the role in the Los Angeles company two years later instead.
• The Royal Canadian Mint issued a commemorative three-dollar coin in 2013 that Short helped design, featuring his Lake Rosseau summer home. Canada Post put him on a stamp two years later.
• When Short appeared with Steve Martin and Chevy Chase in Saturday Night Live‘s Five-Timers Club sketch in 2013, he had only hosted three times, so the sketch cast him as a waiter.
• He is a lifelong fan of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, and returned to his hometown to shoot the 2012 CBC special I, Martin Short, Goes Home.

Quotes

“You head for the light.”

– Martin Short, CBS Sunday Morning (May 2026)

“We must figure a way to survive through grief without denying it”

– Martin Short, NPR Morning Edition (May 2026)

“these kind of life stresses either empower you or defeat you”

– Martin Short, The Hollywood Reporter (August 2024)

“The hustle is real. I know! It’s real and maybe pathetic, but that’s me.”

– Martin Short, TVLine (July 2025)

“Actually it’s more than a thrill, it’s a contractual obligation.”

– Martin Short, CBC media release (2013)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: What is Martin Short’s age?
A: He was born on March 26, 1950, which makes him 76 as of 2026.

Q: What is Martin Short best known for?
A: Most current viewers know him as Oliver Putnam on Only Murders in the Building. Longer-running audiences know him for the characters he built on SCTV and Saturday Night Live, particularly Ed Grimley and Jiminy Glick, and for Franck Eggelhoffer in Father of the Bride.

Q: Has Martin Short won an Emmy or a Tony?
A: Both. He has two Primetime Emmy Awards, one for writing on SCTV in 1983 and one as a producer of the 2014 AFI tribute to Mel Brooks, and a 1999 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Little Me.

Q: Where is Martin Short from?
A: He was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen who retains Canadian citizenship, and also holds British and Irish citizenship.

Q: Is Martin Short married?
A: He was married to actress Nancy Dolman from 1980 until her death from ovarian cancer in 2010. They had three children. A relationship with his Only Murders co-star Meryl Streep has been widely reported since 2024, but neither has publicly confirmed it.

Q: Does Martin Short have official social media?
A: No account is verifiable as definitively official. Many fan and impersonation accounts exist, so treat unverified profiles with caution and confirm credits through official studio and network announcements.

Upcoming Projects

• Only Murders in the Building, Season 6 (expected 2026) – Hulu renewed the series in October 2025 and moved the story to London, where production began in May 2026, with Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez all returning. The season adds a large British guest cast including Martin Freeman, Derek Jacobi, Jane Horrocks, Jennifer Saunders, and Simone Ashley. No premiere date has been announced, and reporting points to a fall 2026 window that should be treated as an expectation rather than a confirmation.
• 78th Primetime Emmy Awards (September 14, 2026) – Short is nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Only Murders in the Building and Outstanding Host for a Game Show for Match Game, while Marty, Life Is Short is nominated for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special.
• The Best of Steve Martin and Martin Short live tour (ongoing through 2026) – The joint stage show resumed on April 11, 2026 after dates were postponed in February, with additional North American dates scheduled into the autumn and winter. Tour naming has varied between listings, so confirm the billing and dates against the official tour page before relying on specifics.
• Match Game (status to be confirmed) – Short hosts and executive produces the ABC revival, which premiered in July 2025. Further seasons have not been publicly announced. Treat any continuation as unconfirmed until the network says otherwise.

Interviews & Features

• NPR, “Marty, Life Is Short reveals the losses endured by comedy legend Martin Short” (May 2026), a Morning Edition conversation in which Short explains why he refused to delay the documentary’s release.
• Variety, “Martin Short on the Future of Only Murders in the Building” (October 2025), an Awards Circuit Podcast interview on the show’s longevity and his first SAG win.
• Vanity Fair, “Comedy Legend Martin Short Recalls His Start in Showbiz” (October 2014), an excerpt from his memoir covering the Toronto years and the accidental start of the career.
• Deadline, “Emmy Nominee Martin Short On The Morning Show” (September 2020), the clearest interview on his approach to the dramatic work most viewers do not associate with him.
• CBC News, “Despite profound loss, Martin Short’s happy gene on display in new documentary” (May 2026), a Canadian read on how the losses in his life shaped his fearlessness as a performer.

Public Appearances & Festivals

• SNL50: The Anniversary Special (February 2025): Appeared in New York for Saturday Night Live‘s fiftieth anniversary broadcast, and contracted COVID there, which kept him from the SAG Awards the following week.
• 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards (February 23, 2025): Won Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series in Los Angeles while absent with COVID. Joey King and Jack Quaid accepted for him, and Selena Gomez later hand-delivered the trophy on camera.
• 77th Primetime Emmy Awards (September 14, 2025): Attended in Los Angeles as a lead comedy actor nominee for Only Murders in the Building, which went home empty-handed against The Studio.
• 32nd Actor Awards (March 1, 2026): Nominated in two categories but absent from Los Angeles following the death of his daughter Katherine the previous week. The broadcast cut to a photograph when his name was read.
• Marty, Life Is Short premiere (May 6, 2026): Walked the carpet at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles alongside director Lawrence Kasdan, his first major public appearance since February.