Andrea Martin
2024 Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award (Screens and Voices (formerly Broadcasting and Film))
Actor
Andrea Martin’s hilarious characterizations and heart-warming performances have been delighting audiences for over 40 years. A beloved icon of stage and screen, she gained prominence in the 1980s as a regular on the award-winning sketch comedy series
SCTV (Second City Television). Her Broadway career has earned her Tony Awards for featured actor in the musicals
My Favorite Year (1993) and
Pippin (2013), and she has an equally impressive list of film and television appearances.
Ms. Martin was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, and became a Canadian citizen in 2017. Shortly after graduating from college, she moved from New York to Toronto and was cast in a production of
Godspell alongside a lineup of future legends, including Eugene Levy (GGPAA 2008), Gilda Radner, and Martin Short (GGPAA 2017).
In 1975, she joined the cast of Toronto’s Second City stage show, which evolved into
SCTV and featured comedy greats John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara (GGPAA 2021), and Dave Thomas. Ms. Martin portrayed a parade of eccentric characters, notably leopard-print-clad station manager Edith Prickley, incomprehensible Eastern European immigrant Pirini Scleroso, and feminist TV host Libby Wolfson. Her work on
SCTV earned her and the rest of the writing team two Emmys. More recently, she has appeared in
Great News and
Only Murders in the Building, also starring Steve Martin and Martin Short.
Ms. Martin’s film credits include
Wag the Dog,
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and the hit trilogy
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (as Aunt Voula). She has also lent her voice to many animated features and series, including
The Rugrats Movie,
The Simpsons,
Superman, and
Sesame Street.
She has written and produced two one-woman shows:
Nude, Nude, Totally Nude and
Andrea Martin: Final Days! Everything Must Go!! Her critically acclaimed memoir,
Lady Parts, was published in 2014.
Of her wide-ranging career, she says, “One thing led to another; doors opened, I showed up, I did the best I could, and I loved every minute of it. I still do.”
Andrea Martin’s awards and honours include two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, four ACTRA Awards, and the Women in Television and Film Award. She was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2018.