Fool no more

Steve Martin has a problem with 'hellos'. He doesn't quite know whether to gush or to play them for laughs. When Richard E. Grant, the English actor who is now one of Martin's closest friends, arrived in Hollywood to start working with him on the film LA Story, their first encounter got off to a stuttering start.

'We are so thrilled you are able to do this movie,' said Martin, his face wreathed in the magnanimous smiles of the superstar.

'Believe me, the thrill's all mine,' matched Grant.

Then, as a long afternoon of exchanging sugary pleasantries stretched out before them, Martin suddenly switched tactics and went into a comic 'bit' that Grant has come to know as his 'all-purpose Showbiz Schlockmeister routine' and which involves showering the visitor with an intentionally ludicrous stream of stock insincerities.

His pose as a gracious and civil host had lasted less than 30 seconds. This turns out, however, to be longer than many strangers get. Even the printed cards that Martin once handed out to autograph hunters did not take the idea of celebrity very seriously. They read: 'This certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent and funny.'

Over the 24 years since the comedian began to establish himself as a star on the hit television show Saturday Night Live, interviewers have often noted how difficult Martin finds it to present himself 'in person'.

'He wants to be nice. But it is as if he is determined that you shouldn't have the chance to make any harsh judgments, so he goes into a comic persona,' said one New York film writer who spent a day with him last year.

Whether this standard performance is a sign of shyness or control-freakery is anyone's guess, but certainly this month the 55-year-old is asking the world to look at him afresh. His first novella, a poignant romance called Shopgirl, has just been published and the star has taken the opportunity to tell the world that he wants to leave both the stage and the film lot behind him forever.

'I've made two decisions in my life,' he said. 'One was to leave stand-up and go into movies. The other is to write. Now is my time to write.'

Although Bowfinger, Martin's 1999 movie attacking the film industry, was critically well-received, he now intends to turn down the kind of parts that have recently earned him around $6 million a throw. A string of earlier flops, such as Mixed Nuts and Leap of Faith, have had an impact. 'It just wasn't fun anymore,' Martin explained.

This spring he made his first concerted move away from film and back into television. He and his business partner, Joan Stein, have signed a seven figure deal with the Carsey-Werner studio, the makers of Third Rock From the Sun, Cybill and Roseanne. They plan to write and produce a weekly show.

To underline the change in gear, Martin told fans who attended a New York book reading last month that he had hated his time as a famous comic.

'I know it sounds clichéd, but it was the most miserable time in my life. I couldn't leave my hotel room, I couldn't go outside. I was isolated, and isolation is where creativity ends.'

But then again, Martin was talking to an audience at the time. And he was wearing luminous green socks underneath his sober, literary suit.

So are we witnessing the 'tears of a clown' syndrome once again? Is this another cult comic hero who obsesses about the lightweight nature of his talents?

Martin, by now an acknowledged comedian, screenwriter, playwright, author and musician, is regularly likened to Woody Allen. And it is true they have both grown away from pure gags. But there are some big distinctions too.

Allen's innate intellectual confidence means he has never strained to take on any of his new guises. What's more, while both Allen and Martin's early work - in films such as Sleeper and The Man with Two Brains, respectively - was funny because it was truly silly, Martin initially had much the blacker tone. It is Allen, then, who has pushed himself towards heavier dramatic forms and Martin who has leavened his career by taking the primrose path into the Hollywood mainstream.

His 130-page novella marks a turning point. It tells the story of Mirabelle, 'a beautiful wallflower' in her early thirties who is looking for love as she sells gloves in the Beverly Hills store, Neimans. In what is surely a whisper of authorial wish-fulfilment, she one day meets a millionaire in his fifties and a bitter-sweet flirtation begins.

Martin has said the experience of having his heart broken and of breaking other people's hearts has prompted the story. It is a much more deliberately sensitive piece of writing than seen in his best-selling collection of stories and sketches, Pure Drivel.

In 1993 Martin broke up with his English wife, Victoria Tennant, with whom he had starred in LA Story. He then went on to a high profile relationship with the film actress Anne Heche, who eventually left him for the lesbian sitcom star, Ellen DeGeneres.

Most recently the comic's name has been briefly linked with that of another English woman, Helena Bonham Carter, who will appear with him this autumn in a comic thriller called Novocaine. So far, the actor has no children, explaining that he is 'too selfish' and 'moves around too much'.

Martin, the original whacko from Waco, grew up in Texas and later California with his sister, Melinda, in the care of upright, religious parents. He broke away from such church-going strictures when he started selling guidebooks in Disneyland and learned to play the banjo.

A proper job in showbusiness came with the role of television writer for Dick Van Dyke and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but real fame arrived in 1976 when Martin hosted his first Saturday Night Live. Easily distinguished by the rabbit ears and the arrow he wore on his head, Martin has always had a taste for simple vaudeville. One of his many stage acts, The Great Flydini, consisted of pulling a series of outré objects - for instance, eggs - from his unzipped fly.

Unlikely though it may sound, international stardom followed quickly in 1979 with his film The Jerk and from then on Martin, much like Jerry Lewis before him, was to be strongly identified with the pratfall and the funny walk.

His heroes, he says, were Jackie Gleason and Charlie Chaplin and, revealingly, it is their 'elegance' he singles out for praise. Martin's skill, far from a nerdy lack of physical control, is to see the discipline and grace required for this kind of comedy. Despite his frantic energy, friends and colleagues often sense a distance and a yearning for beauty and calm in Martin.

Jonathan Lynn, the British film maker who directed him in Sgt Bilko in 1996, says he detected a certain remoteness in a man who was also, paradoxically, 'a national institution' in the United States.

Martin's own sister has spoken publically too of his 'distance'. The siblings see each other infrequently and her brother, she has said, kept his links with the family to a minimum.

In 1993 Martin made his debut as a playwright with Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a comic fantasy which went on to have a successful off-Broadway run. He has also appeared on the 'legit' stage in Samuel Beckett's bleak psychodrama, Waiting for Godot, at New York's Lincoln Centre. Nowadays, he is reported to spend a lot of time extending his valuable fine art collection.

If Martin really does retreat from his fans and opt instead to create from behind the scenes as a writer or producer, perhaps the art of stand-up comedy should not feel too neglected. Tastes have moved on, and Martin's comparative restraint might not please the crowds any longer.

After all, even The Great Flydini would look tame today when West End audiences are rolling in the aisles to the sight of live gonad manipulation in the Puppetry of the Penis.