Jared Martin

Jared Christopher Martin (December 21, 1941 – May 24, 2017) was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television over several decades. Born in Manhattan, he was the son of Charles Elmer Martin, a cover artist and cartoonist for The New Yorker, and Florence Taylor, an artist and homemaker. Martin began performing at age ten in a local children's theater group. He later attended the Putney School and Columbia University, where his roommate was filmmaker Brian De Palma. Following graduation, he apprenticed with Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park before spending two years at The New York Times as a copy boy and thumbnail book reviewer for the Sunday edition.

Martin's professional stage career developed through a series of regional and institutional engagements. He joined a summer stock company in Cape May, New Jersey, then performed a season with Boston Classical Repertory before rejoining Papp at the Public Theater in Manhattan. In 1965, he co-founded Group 6 Productions, a New York film and stage production company through which he directed A Night on the Town. The following year, he played the lead role in De Palma's first feature film, Murder à la Mod. His Broadway career included an appearance in Torch Song Trilogy, which ran from 1982 to 1983. Martin was originally from New York, New York.

On television, Martin became a recognizable presence in episodic drama throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with guest appearances on series including The Partridge Family, Columbo, The Waltons, Wonder Woman, CHiPs, Hart to Hart, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., and L.A. Law, among many others. He held recurring roles on several series, beginning with the science fiction program The Fantastic Journey in 1977, where he played the character Varian. He also appeared in a handful of episodes of How the West Was Won during its 1978–79 season as Frank Grayson. His most prominent television role came on the prime-time soap opera Dallas, where he played Steven "Dusty" Farlow intermittently from 1979 through the series finale in 1991. During a hiatus from that series, Martin studied with Lee Strasberg. From 1988 to 1990, he starred as Dr. Harrison Blackwood in the two-season science fiction series War of the Worlds, relocating to Toronto to take on the role.

Martin's film credits included Westworld (1973), The Lonely Lady (1983), and Quiet Cool (1986), as well as the soap opera One Life to Live, on which he appeared as Dr. Donald Lamarr from 1987 to 1988. After War of the Worlds concluded in 1990, he spent approximately eighteen months traveling, writing, and pursuing photography. In 1994, he directed In Deeper, a feature-length docudrama produced as part of Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell's Heroes of the Streets campaign, at the request of entrepreneur Jeffrey Seder. He subsequently co-founded Lost Dog Productions, an independent film production company that created content for social service and cultural nonprofits, including the film Smarty Jones - A Pennsylvania Champion. He also hosted Philly Live, an interview talk show series. From 2004 to 2007, Martin served as senior lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, teaching acting and directing.

Martin was married three times: to Nancy Fales from 1963 to 1977, to Carol Vogel from 1979 to 1984, and to Yu Wei from 2000 until his death. He died of pancreatic cancer on May 24, 2017, at his home in Philadelphia at the age of 75.