Conversations with Andrea Martin

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• published: 01 Aug 2013
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Q&A; with Andrea Martin. Moderated by Richard Ridge. ANDREA MARTIN is currently appearing on Broadway as Berthe in the Tony Award winning new production of Pippin, for which she earned 2013 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Ms. Martin began her career as a singing chicken on the "Captain Kangaroo" television show. She was then cast in the US Touring Company of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which she played Lucy. It was during that tour that she visited Toronto, Canada, fell in love with the city, later moved there and within a month got cast in the Toronto production of Godspell. That show also featured the now legendary cast of Victor Garber, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Jayne Eastwood and Paul Shaffer, their musical director. Ms. Martin went on to appear in Leonard Bernstein's Candide as well as Private Lives with Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theatre. She has appeared in numerous theatre and television productions in Canada, the most notable being Toronto's Second City stage show for five years which led to the critically claimed "SCTV." She has hosted every televised award program in the country and is the recipient of both the Canada Walk of Fame and Women in Television and Film awards. For her work in the recent Toronto production of Love, Loss and What I Wore, as well as her one woman show Final Days! Everything Must Go!!, she received BroadwayWorld.com's 2010 Best Actress and Best Theatrical Event Awards. Ms Martin has also received four ACTRA awards for her involvement in "SCTV," two GEMINI nominations for hosting the 2007 Winnipeg Comedy Festival and for the CBC miniseries, "St. Urban's Horseman." Her film credits include Breaking Upwards, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (SAG award nomination and People's Choice Award for Best Ensemble), Hedwig and the Angry Inch, All Over the Guy, Mary Walsh's Young Triffie's Been Made Away With, Stepping Out, Bogus, Wag the Dog, New York Minute, both the original and remake of Black Christmas, and Cannibal Girls (co-starring Eugene Levy) for which she won the Best Actress Award at SITGES, the international horror film festival of Spain. For her work on "SCTV" Ms. Martin won 2 Emmy Awards for writing and received an Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a Variety series. Her additional television credits include "My Big Fat Greek Life," "Little Mosque on the Prairie," and "Nurse Jackie." She is the recipient of 3 American Comedy Award nominations for several cable specials including her own "Andrea Martin Together Again" for Showtime, which also received a Cable Ace Award nomination for writing. She has lent her voice to an impressive list of animated projects including Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, The Rugrats Movie, "The Simpsons," Superman, Anastasia, "George and Martha," and "Sesame Street" for which she received a special Emmy Award. Ms. Martin has received more Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations as a Featured Actress in a Musical than any other actress. She received her first Tony and Drama Desk Awards, as well as a Theatre World Award, for her Broadway debut as Alice Miller in My Favorite Year. She went on to receive nominations for her performances as Juliette in Exit the King opposite Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon, Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein, Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! and the Old Lady in Candide. She also appeared on Broadway as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof opposite Harvey Fierstein. Her off-Broadway theater credits include her one-woman show Nude, Nude, Totally Nude (Drama Desk Award nomination), On the Town (City Center Encores!), The Exonerated, The Vagina Monologues and The Merry Wives of Windsor. She has appeared regionally in The Torch-Bearers, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Matchmaker, The Royal Family (all at Williamstown Theatre Festival). She also starred in the Huntington Theatre Company productions of The Rose Tattoo and Betty's Summer Vacation, for which she won the IRNE and the Elliot Norton Award for Best Actress. She divides her time between New York City and Toronto, when she is not interfering in the lives of her grown sons, Jack and Joe, who reside in LA.