Jesse L. Martin

• Born: Jan 18, 1969 in Rocky Mountain, Virginia
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
• Career Highlights: Rent, Christmas Carol: The Musical, Sexual Healing
• First Major Screen Credit: Law & Order: Season 10 (1999)

Biography

Jesse L. Martin is proof that talent and popularity are not mutually exclusive. When the award-winning stage actor joined the cast of NBC's Law and Order in its tenth season, the program's already high ratings increased by 40 percent. Martin's debut episode drew the largest audience in Law and Order's history and positive press attracted more viewers throughout the season. The once starving artist is now both a critic's darling and one of T.V. Guide's "Sexiest People on Television," confirming that he is an actor with genuinely wide appeal.

Martin was born Jesse Lamont Watkins on January 18, 1969, in Rocky Mountain, VA. He is the youngest of five sons. Martin's parents, truck driver Jesse Reed Watkins and college counselor Virginia Price, divorced when he was a child. Ms. Price eventually remarried and the boys adopted their stepfather's surname. When Martin was in grade school, the family relocated to Buffalo, NY, and the move was not an immediate success: Martin hated to speak because of his thick Southern accent and was often overcome with shyness. A concerned teacher influenced him to join an after-school drama program and cast him as the pastor in The Golden Goose. Being from Virginia, the young Martin played the character the only way he knew how: as an inspired Southern Baptist preacher. The act was a hit, and Martin emerged from his shell.

The actor attended high school at Buffalo School for the Performing Arts, where he was voted "Most Talented" in his senior class. He later enrolled in New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts Theater Program. After graduation, Martin toured the states with John Houseman's Acting Company. He appeared in Shakespeare's Rock-in-Roles at the Actors Theater of Louisville and The Butcher's Daughter at the Cleveland Playhouse, and returned to Manhattan to perform in local theater, soap operas, and commercials. Finding that auditions, regional theater, and bit parts were no way to support oneself, Martin waited tables at several restaurants around the city. He was literally serving a pizza when his appearance on CBS's Guiding Light aired in the same eatery.

Martin made his Broadway debut in Timon of Athens, and then performed in The Government Inspector with Lainie Kazan. While employed at the Moondance Diner, he met the late playwright Jonathan Larson, who also worked on the restaurant's staff. In 1996, Larson's musical Rent took the theater world by storm -- with Martin in the part of gay computer geek Tom Collins. The '90s update of Puccini's La Bohème earned six Drama Desk Awards, five Obie Awards, four Tony Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. Martin soon landed roles on Fox's short-lived 413 Hope Street and Eric Bross' independent film Restaurant (1998). Ally McBeal's creator, David E. Kelly, attended Rent's Broadway premiere and remembered Martin when the show needed a new boyfriend for Calista Flockhart's Ally. The actor's performance as Dr. Greg Butters on Ally McBeal caught David Duchovny's eye, who then cast Martin as a baseball-playing alien in a 1999 episode of The X-Files that he wrote and directed.

While still shooting Ally McBeal, Martin heard rumors that actor Benjamin Bratt planned to leave the cast of Law and Order. Martin tried out for the show years before and won the minor role of a car-radio thief named Earl the Hamster, but decided to wait for a bigger part. With the opportunity presenting itself, Martin begged Law and Order producer Dick Wolf for Bratt's role. Wolf hoped to cast him, and upon hearing that CBS and Fox both offered Martin development deals, he gave the actor the part without an audition.

During his first year on Law and Order, Martin co-produced the one-man show Fully Committed, about the amusing experiences of a waiter at an upscale restaurant. A skilled vocalist -- he sang in Rent, on Ally McBeal, and The X-Files -- Martin later appeared in the Rocky Horror Picture Show anniversary special and hopes to star in a big-screen biography of his mother's favorite singer, Marvin Gaye. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide

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Personal Information

Born on January 18, 1969, in Rocky Mount, VA; son of a truck driver and a college career counselor.
Education: Studied theater at New York University.

Career

Actor. Began career off-Broadway; appeared in the original cast of Rent, 1996; television shows: 413 Hope St., 1997; Ally McBeal, 1998; Law & Order 1999-.

Life's Work

Jesse L. Martin's television roles have ranged from detectives to doctors, but the towering, well-built actor has been celebrated as the one of the medium's newest romantic leads. Martin began his career on Broadway, and has appeared on Ally McBeal and Law & Order. In 1999 he was named "Sexiest Newcomer" by People magazine in its annual "Sexiest Man Alive" issue. "Women do come up to me, and they tell me what they think!" Martin admitted to the magazine, "I've gotten great compliments on my eyes and my smile. But I don't see myself as sexy."

Martin was born on January 18, 1969, in Rocky Mount, Virginia, a small burg deep inside the Blue Ridge Mountains. His father was a truck driver, and his mother eventually became a career counselor at a local college, but the pair divorced when he was still young and Martin and his mother moved to Buffalo, New York. He was just nine at the time, and was teased at school because of his Southern accent. Being bused to an integrated school only added to his difficulties in adjusting to his new life. "It's always tough when you're a kid and you feel different from everybody else and you're picked on because of it," he told In Style. "But I got over it and learned to blend--and I worked very hard to get rid of my accent."

The acting bug bit Martin when he was cast in his first play during his fourth-grade year. The production was The Golden Goose, and he was "the pastor, which I associated with a brimstone-and-fire, Southern Baptist sort of preacher, so that's the way I played it," he told Entertainment Weekly. "None of the white kids there had ever seen anything like that, and everyone was impressed, thought it was very funny. I got so much positive feedback, I knew I was on my way to being a performer."

Still, in his teens Martin was a self-professed nerd and shy despite his years in a performing-arts program for gifted students. At 16, he asked a girl on a date--for the first time--and planned to meet her at the movies to see The Color Purple, but she stood him up. After finishing high school, he attended New York University, where he majored in theater but did not graduate. "When I was accepted, my mother cried because she knew we couldn't afford it," he revealed to Cosmopolitan. "But I worked four or five jobs at a time to stay there. Then I had to leave because school was interfering with work--and I couldn't afford not to work." Martin revealed in the same interview that the most undignified job from these years he held was at a department store offering perfume spritzes to shoppers.

Martin's big break came, unbeknownst to him at the time, when he was cast in the original company of Rent in 1996. The play, a musical based on the 1896 Puccini opera La Boheme, opened to overwhelmingly positive reviews--a success made all the more poignant by the fact that its creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly before just opening night. Rent is set in modern-day New York City, in its own bohemian East Village quarter, and Martin was cast as Tom Collins, a character whose boyfriend is a transvestite. "Although characters appear and disappear, seemingly at will, memorable impressions are made by" Martin and several castmates, noted Back Stage critic David A. Rosenberg. Other characters include a woman dying of AIDS and those struggling with drug additions. Martin reprised his role on the London stage in 1998, which prompted Variety critic Matt Wolf to state that "Martin impresses with a sincerity that never once becomes stolid: His reprise of the wrenching 'I'll Cover You' emerges tearfully, from someplace within."

Though Martin would later segue successfully into television, he admitted to harboring a certain passion for the theater. "There's something exciting about being onstage, knowing anything could go wrong." he told In Style. In 1997 he was offered a lead role on a new hour-long drama series created and produced by Damon Wayans, 413 Hope St. The show was set at a New York City teen crisis center, where Martin's character, Antonio, served as a staff psychologist. He also appeared in one episode of the X-Files as a Negro Baseball League star who was actually an alien. But Martin's more memorable television credit came when he was offered a recurring guest role on the hit Fox-TV show Ally McBeal. He played Dr. Greg Butters, a paramour of the star for a few episodes. Reportedly the actress Michelle Pfeiffer, wife of Ally McBeal creative force David E. Kelley, had seen Martin in Rent and recommended him for a guest spot on the show. The interracial romance between the pair attracted some hate mail, but the issue was deliberately skirted in the scripts. "Calista [Flockhart as the show's star] and I loved that our characters never discussed race," he told Cosmopolitan.

In 1999 Martin replaced outgoing Benjamin Bratt on the hit television drama Law & Order. He was cast as Detective Ed Green, a new character. Martin's Green seems unflappable, but is in reality a brooder with a possible gambling problem. Martin had already auditioned for several other guest roles on critically acclaimed show, but was usually offered unsavory criminal parts that were not much of a challenge professionally. The new part gave Martin a chance to stretch his talents as a dramatic actor. "Green is not a predictable guy," he told Entertainment Weekly. "There's not a lot about him that I know," a secrecy that the show's producers fostered to maintain a sense of realism.

The longer contract with Law & Order meant that Martin had to move from Los Angeles to New York City, a change that pleased him immensely. He has maintained his six feet, two inch physique with a regiment of yoga and calisthenics. The actor has often been told that he resembles late soul singer Marvin Gaye, and has said that his dream project would be the starring role in a film biography about the troubled Motown star, slain by his own father in 1984. Meanwhile, he has claimed he is eager to rid himself of the "eligible bachelor" tag, as he told In Style. "Me, I don't want to be eligible," Martin declared in In Style. "I want to be one of those guys that's completely hooked up and can't be considered a bachelor."

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Back Stage, May 10, 1996, p. 48.
• Broadcasting & Cable, May 3, 1999, p. 60.
• Cosmopolitan, May 2001, p. 232.
• Entertainment Weekly, November 12, 1999, p. 33.
• In Style, November 1, 2000, p. 207.
• People, November 15, 1999, p. 102.
• Variety, September 22, 1997, p. 88; May 18, 1998, p. 82.

Online

• Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com.

— Carol Brennan

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