Martin’s mom, Olive, died when he was 17 after battling most cancers for years. Two years later, his father died of issues from a stroke.
The losses made him an orphan earlier than he turned 20 years previous. Regardless of enduring heartbreaks in his youthful years, he mentioned the tragedy he skilled helped put together him to face better challenges later in life.
“I feel the rationale all that did not throw me sideways was as a result of I had such a strong basis,” he advised The Guardian in 2012. “These sorts of conditions are horrible, however I feel that you’re both empowered by them otherwise you develop into a sufferer of them.”
Martin added, “I bear in mind chatting with my buddy the satirist Stephen Colbert a few days after a White Home Correspondents’ Dinner the place he’d pushed it actually, actually far along with his materials in entrance of George W. Bush, who was not discovering it humorous in any respect.”
“I mentioned, ‘Weren’t you scared?’ and he mentioned, ‘Once I was 12, my father and two brothers had been killed in a aircraft crash collectively. That day I used to be scared.’ And when he advised me that story, I assumed, ‘I do know from what you communicate,'” he shared.
In a separate interview with CNN in 2013, the Three Amigos actor opened up about how loss – at any age – pushes individuals to really feel “empowered in a bizarre manner.”
“You possibly can both go right into a route of say being, ‘I’m going to be a sufferer from this. I’ll be a drunk. I’ll do medication. However, you do not know what I have been via.’ Otherwise you develop into extra resilient,” mentioned Martin.
He additionally advised Individuals that, whereas it “seems like a tragic household,” it “actually is not.”
“My mom had most cancers, and she or he had been ailing after which in remission since I used to be 13. She was a outstanding individual; each my dad and mom had been. So I by no means checked out it as if it was a tragedy – that I did not have them my entire life,” Martin clarified. “You study some sense of priorities. Our entire household took the perspective that you probably have fantastic moments, do not second-guess them, simply get pleasure from them.”