Martin Lawrence

Martin Lawrence was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1965 and built the act on stage before anyone put him on camera, working the comedy circuit including The Improv. His first acting job was the sitcom What's Happening Now!!, and the late eighties handed him small film parts, Cee in Do the Right Thing and Bilal in the House Party pictures. Then in 1992 he co-created Martin for Fox and played the title role for five years, which is the show that turned him into a film lead rather than a supporting comic.

What he does better than almost anyone is escalate. Lawrence plays men who talk themselves into a corner and then talk faster, and the trick is that the panic reads as real while the delivery stays musical. Marcus Burnett in Bad Boys is the definitive version: a detective who does not want to be there, complaining his way through an action film while his partner enjoys it. He has now played Marcus four times, in 1995, 2003, 2020 and 2024, which is a stranger achievement than the sequel count suggests.

The other lane was disguise. Big Momma's House in 2000 turned a fat suit into a franchise with two sequels behind it, and Black Knight dropped him into the Middle Ages. Between the broad hits sit the ones people forget: the 1999 caper Blue Streak, where a jewel thief impersonates a police detective to recover his own diamond, the prison picture Life from the same year, and A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, which he directed himself in 1996.

He is still in the middle of it. Bad Boys: Ride or Die arrived in 2024, the animated Sneaks in 2025, and the catalogue lists him for 7 Dogs in 2026.