Martin Mull (Chicago, 1943 – Los Angeles, 2024) was an American painter, actor and comedian. He is best remembered for his television and film roles, such as Colonel Mustard in the 1985 film Clue, Leon Carp on Roseanne and Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development, but he also built a serious parallel career as a painter.
Born in Chicago to an actress and director and an engineer, he moved as a child to Ohio and later to Connecticut. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1965 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1967. Before turning to acting he began as a songwriter, penning a 1970 country single for Jane Morgan, and then recorded his own satirical music, performing with thrift-store furniture on stage.
His first notable role came in 1976 with the absurdist soap Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, followed by the parody talk shows Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night, where he played Barth Gimble. He created and starred in the short-lived CBS sitcom Domestic Life in 1984, and played Leon Carp on Roseanne from 1991 to 1997. Later he played Willard Kraft on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, voiced Vlad Masters in Danny Phantom and had a recurring role as the pharmacist Russell on Two and a Half Men.
As a painter, he began in the 1970s and held his first serious solo show in 1980 at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles. His work often combined photorealist painting with pop art and collage. In 1971 he took part in the protest exhibit Flush with the Walls in the men's room of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Some of his paintings appeared as book and album covers, including Joyce Carol Oates's novel My Sister, My Love. He also published a book of his paintings in 1995.
Mull's legacy lies in both television comedy and in a painting practice that mixed irony with seriousness. He died in June 2024 at his home in Los Angeles, aged 80.