Heartthrob

Jesse L. Martin plays a tough detective on Law & Order, but in real life, he’s a romantic.

PANACHE by Laura Debrizzi

Jesse L. Martin seems to have been born in the wrong era. Soft spoken and elegant, he would be better suited to the days when men like Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper reigned supreme on celluloid. Despiteyears in a cutthroat business, he remains a gentleman; complimenting his fellow actors with adjectives like “creative,” and “outstanding” and making it clear he values his employment on NBC’s Law & Order.

Martin, like so many classic stars, got his start as a stars, got his start as a song-and-dance man. He originated the Tom Collins role in the 1996 Tony Award winning musical Rent and reprised it for the follow-up movie. Female viewers started to take notice when he played Ally McBeal’s love interest,Dr. Greg Butters, in 1998. He downplays the swooning, which intensified after he took the role of Detective Ed Green on Law & Order in 1999. “I guess it’s better than somebody saying ‘he’s a dog’,” laughs Martin,when he is asked to comment on his heartthrob status. “I grew up such a nerd and not the most attractive kid. The fact that anybody would say anything close to that now is funny and, of course, flattering to an extent. And if it keeps me working,well, that’s cool, too.” Martin, the middle child of five boys born to Virginia Price and Jesse Reed Watkins, describes himself as having been a “shy” and “quiet”kid who faced a difficult transition when his mother moved the family from Virginia to Buffalo, New York. “I went from having a Southern accent to sort of a Buffalo accent mixed with a Southern accent —which doesn’t sound good at all,”he says of the years he spent at the prestigious Buffalo Academy For Visual and Performing Arts.

Neither female adulation nor the wisdom of age has made Martin immune to flare-ups of that childhood self-consciousness. “The truth of the matter is when stuff like (TV Guide’s Sexiest Men) is published, I get so much junk from our crew members on L&O. All I hear is ‘Hey, Mr. Sexy!’And I have to deal with that all day long. I mean it’s better than having rocks thrown at you, but after a while teasing is teasing,”he explains.

Martin who, for the most part, has managed to keep his private life under wraps despite high-profile gigs on both television and the New York stage, slowly opens up about his personal life. The good news is that Martin is single and looking for love. Unfortunately, the actor with the melodic voice hasn’t found“the one”as quickly as he would have liked.

"Relationships are not necessarily the easiest thing to do with a 14-hour-a-day schedule, 9 months out of the year,”he laments. “Not everybody is lucky enough to find the love of their life... and I hope to find it one day, but you can’t force it. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

” The actor admits he yearns to be a caretaker to a brood of little Martins. “All of my friends have kids now, so there are plenty of children in my life. And I have nieces and nephews. But I would definitely love to have my own. No doubt,” he notes firmly.

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