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‘If you’re anointed tonight, you can be dumped on tomorrow’: Steve Martin on fame, failure and TV humiliation

Jerry Seinfeld calls him ‘the most idolised comedian ever’. Yet after five decades at the top, success still makes him cringe. He discusses doubting himself, starring in a documentary – and that Dennis Pennis encounter

No one who has seen Roxanne, the modern-day interpretation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac that found Martin investing his comedy with emotional weight for the first time, will dispute the Edward-Lear-like genius of the line “earn more sessions by sleeving”. A generous chunk of time is devoted to the magnificent but maligned 1981 film version of Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, which represented a brave attempt by Martin to extend his range right at the point where he could have sleepwalked into a sequel to The Jerk. “What’s the question?” he asks good-naturedly, only for Kaye to deliver the killer blow: “How come you’re not funny any more?” Martin then turns back to the throng, fatigued and deflated, and continues his dead-man-walking trudge past photographers.

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