Martin Mull (born August 18, 1943) is an American actor who has starred in his own TV sitcom and acted in prominent films. He is also a comedian, painter and recording artist.
Mull was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in North Ridgeville, Ohio from age 2 to 15 years old, when his family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where he attended and graduated from public high school. He studied painting and went on to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting. Twice divorced, Mull is married to singer Wendy Mull.
Following a period of stand-up comedy performances and humorous song recordings including opening for Frank Zappa at Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters in 1973, his first famous role was as Garth Gimble and Barth Gimble in the television nighttime absurdist soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), which led to spin-off comedy talk shows Fernwood 2-Night (1977) and America 2-Night (1978), in which he played the emcee Barth Gimble, opposite Fred Willard as sidekick Jerry Hubbard. During 1984 Mull starred in a CBS sitcom, Domestic Life, with Megan Follows playing his teenaged daughter. He also has appeared as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, appearing as the center square in the show's final season.
A caricature of Martin Mull in front of Hollywood Hills Amphitheater at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
He has also been in one episode of The Golden Girls, where he plays a hippy that is afraid of the outside world.
He has also acted in feature films, including:
Recurring roles followed on several television series:
During the 1980s, Mull starred in a series of television commercials for Michelob, and in a series of television and radio commercials for Red Roof Inn (a chain of budget-oriented hotels owned by Accor) during the mid-1990s. Mull has voiced a lazy robot on one episode of the cartoon series "Dexter's Laboratory", in which he has a rather clueless partner, voiced by Fred Willard. Mull voiced the role of The Evil Cad on Freakazoid! He has recently done the voice of Vlad Masters/Vlad Plasmius on Danny Phantom.
In late 2004, he portrayed "Gene Parmesan," a private investigator who was better at showing up in strange places in strange disguises than actually finding anything out, on the FOX TV series Arrested Development. The episode was called "¡Amigos!".
