A biography for Mae Martinhasn’t been written yet.
“Being on stage at the Soho Theatre is hard to beat.”
“I feel like I grew up in quite a public way in front of audiences.”
“I sort of thought acting was just about arranging your face into emotions. I didn't realise it was about actually allowing yourself to feel the feelings, then letting your face follow. That was a big learning curve.”
“I love 'Titanic', I love 'Romeo & Juliet', those are my favourite films, and so it's crazy to think that people wouldn't connect with 'Feel Good', it's just a love story.”
“I don't have much time for the 'sad clown' thing. It's only associated with comedians because of the disparity between feeling like that and what we do for a living. I bet there are loads of sad bankers and sad dentists. We just don't notice because they aren't bringing that much joy to the world.”
“Bette Midler was my first love, and the intensity of those feelings remain.”
“I'd love to write more observational comedy but the stuff people seem to respond to is the most personal so it's snowballed from there.”
“I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was hanging out with comedians in their thirties. I moved out of home and had some real lows.”
“I formed a sketch troupe with two friends, started doing gigs, and dropped out of school shortly after to pursue it full time! Now it sort of has to work out because I have zero other qualifications.”
“Making someone laugh is a good way to get their defences down so that they might then be open to new ideas, especially when they're laughing at some common ground they relate to. Comedy's always been an amazing tool for social change.”
“Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.”
“Watching comedy for the first time I felt absolutely on fire. I just couldn't believe there was this environment where people were being applauded for the weirdest things about themselves.”
“I'm so unqualified to be a family therapist.”
“You're basically getting on stage and asking people, 'Do you guys like me? Do you like who I am?' But you grow pretty thick skinned. And the less scared you seem, the more people like you anyway.”
“I like to do shows that open a dialogue.”
“It was a slow process of getting closer and closer to my actual personality on stage. And now there's very little separation. I definitely find the more open and vulnerable I am, the more people enjoy it.”
“Love is universal, luckily, but also in general I've found that whenever I've been the most specific in my stand-up, revealing some weird neurosis or quirk I'm ashamed of, that's what people relate to the most. Specificity is key!”
“I'm attracted to funny people with nice hands who smell good and are kind to people.”
“It's a universal experience to be compulsively doing something that's damaging your life.”
“If I could go back and tell 13-year-old self that I would be on screen with Lisa Kudrow, spending my birthday on a ghost train in Blackpool with her, I would have been beside myself.”