You’ve heard him reporting on sports for this radio station and you’ve seen him on WKAR-TV programs like the locally produced Beyond The Score. But there’s more to our friend and colleague Al Martin — he’s also an actor, branching out into movies and commercials.
He says he caught the acting bug about eight years ago. For him, it was a literal calling, when a friend from his MSU student days, now an actor in Los Angeles, contacted him.
“We hadn’t talked in more than a year,” Martin remarked. “She reached out to me out of the blue, saying ‘Hey Al, let’s catch up.’ We had a phone call, and she is the one that brought up ‘Al, you know what? Have you ever tried acting?”
That friend recommended him for an acting class, and the teacher of that class has been Al’s mentor ever since. Over time, he has started to land jobs in a variety of films including romances, dramas and horror films.
Martin has appeared in films with titles like I Vow, I Loved U More, All That Remains and Chedda Boys. You can find them on platforms like YouTube and Tubi.
A TV commercial for a bank with professional golfer Michelle Wie West was Al’s first big project. A golfer himself, Al plays her caddie in the spot. He was flown to a golf course in New Jersey for five hours of filming and the project included a trailer and people to work on his wardrobe and makeup.
“It was fantastic,” Martin said. “That was also a ‘pinch me’ moment, just sitting there in-between takes talking with Michelle Wie. She did give me a few golf pointers that certainly helped my game out that summer. That was fun.”
With a growing list of credits in movies and commercials, Al Martin hasn’t yet tried stage acting, saying acting for a live audience is totally different from being on camera.
“Screen acting is, in comparison to theater, is toned down,” he explained. “You’re being a human. You’re trying to let that human experience come across the lens, right? Whereas in stage, it’s such a different skill set, because you’re using your voice a lot, and trying to hit the back of the room.”
Al covers sports for WKAR full-time but he finds ways to make his acting schedule, including the necessary travel, work. On weekdays, he takes acting classes or preps for auditions. He says his agents do a great job of finding him opportunities that are mostly on weekends.
“If I do book something, I’ll spend the week preparing for that booking,” Martin said. “Then once I clock out on a Friday at WKAR, I’m on a flight to whatever I booked.”
Up next for Al Martin is a lead role in the movie Dark Zero 48 coming out in March. In that one, Al co-stars with Kellie Williams, who played Laura Winslow on the sitcom Family Matters, and Brian Anthony Wilson known for playing Detective Vernon Holley in The Wire.
For now, Al Martin is happy that he gets to keep busy with both his passions: WKAR sports and the movies.
