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[Jun. 25th, 2008|01:44 am] |
Martin Adam Graham was born the oldest of four children June 28th, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was Rosemarie Lyle, known for a few off Broadway roles and a successful Christmas record in 1962, and his father was Alan Graham, a high school theater teacher. Rosemarie turned in her rehearsal time to become a full time Mom to Marty, the only of the four children to be born in the sixties, and therefore the one spoiled longest, for four years straight. He was a bright and always happy child, and despite the fact that he was spoiled out of his mind, he was always polite and fascinated by the Great White Way from the age of six years old onward.
Alan took Marty to see his first Broadway show when his first younger sibling was born, for a matinée performance. That event convinced Marty he was born to be on the stage, and also that he needed to see every show that hit the street. He went one weekend of every month to a different show (expanding soon to off Broadway too) all the way through high school, when he was starring in the school productions under his father's direction. Come senior year, his graduation gift was to go to an evening performance of his favorite show at the time, A Chorus Line, with a date.
After graduating Illinois State University with a Bachelor's degree in Theatre (the program split the focus three ways, between acting, directing and producing shows), Marty rushed off to New York in time to land an ensemble role in The Phantom of the Opera, a new show that had just come from an applauded run on London's West End. Despite his family's disappointment at such a scrap of a part, Marty was incredibly excited, and over the next year soon climbed up to be an understudy for Raoul. Had he stayed on a couple more years, he might have played the lead, but instead he left in June of 1991 for an understudy role in a show called Falsettos, which he only stayed in shortly. A scout was in the audience a night that Marty took the stage, and he was recruited to try out for a Disney show that was in the works at the time.
Marty's audition proved fruitful, and he was cast in a small leading role in Beauty and the Beast, Cogsworth the Clock. It was better than his last few gigs and it paid out better. He stayed with the show over a year, until he auditioned for a last minute role in a film being filmed in New York, aptly titled Bullets Over Broadway, in which he played a naive playwright, trying to make his mark on Broadway while dealing with his cast and their extended group. While the film was a bust like Falsettos, it was the biggest paycheck that Marty had ever received, and landed him another role, this time in the animated Twentieth Century Fox film Anastasia, as Dimitri, a young con man trying to find a look alike of the infamous grand duchess to make money, who accidentally falls in love with his protegee, who happens to be the real princess. He both got to read and sing for the film, which was very succesful.
With a more than decent savings behind him, Marty went back to school to work on his Master's Degree for the next few years, doing some minor bits of ad modeling to pay his way through school without touching the savings he'd built up (that all going to the other bills). In 1999 he shot America's Sweethearts, in which he played a movie star, estranged from his movie star wife, falling in love with her sister/assistant while America mourned their old favorite couple and in 2002, he starred as Billy Flynn in Chicago. He could always rely on films to make a decent buck if he needed to, but Marty missed the stage, and was in luck when he was offered a role in The Producers as a money hungry flop producer, who schemed to make money off of one of his flops with the help of a naive co-producer/accountant. He played Max Bialystock on Broadway for several months, from 2003 to 2006 between two other actors portrayels of Bialystock on stage.
After shooting and releasing the film, which did wonderfully, he took a short and much deserved break to relax before returning to his role as Max for a little over a year again. At that point in time he was nearing the end of his 30's and hadn't had a very long break in a very long time, so he finally finished his Master's degree and took three years off for himself. He didn't show up again until a bit role in a horror movie remake, Halloween in late 2007. After the release of the film he spent several months preparing and in early 2008 returned to the Great White Way as stern father George Banks in their new staged version of Mary Poppins, where he performed until early May.
Marty left Mary Poppins to fly out to Los Angeles to shoot 'Hot Tub Time Machine', where he worked for several months before flying out back to New York to begin rehearsals for another show, A Steady Rain, in which he will play Joey, cop with a beautiful soul. Marty will stay with the production until it ends this coming December. |
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