Cheech Marin Biography
Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin, an American comedian, actor, musician, and activist, was born on July 13, 1946. He rose to fame in the 1970s and early 1980s as a member of the comedic duo Cheech & Chong alongside Tommy Chong and as Don Johnson’s sidekick, Insp. Joe Dominguez, on Nash Bridges. Several Disney movies, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King, the Cars series, Coco, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, feature characters he has voiced.
Despite Marin not speaking Spanish well, his characters’ pronounced Chicano accents have become his signature.
Cheech Marin Early life
Mexican-American parents Elsa (née Meza) (1923-2010), a secretary, and Oscar Marin (1922-2015), an LAPD police officer, welcomed Marin into the world on July 13, 1946, in South Los Angeles, California. Marin has a medically fixed cleft lip when she was born. Marin, who self-identifies as Chicano, utilizes some Spanish in his films but is not fluent.
Cheech, Marin’s nick name, is short for “chicharron,” a popular snack and ingredient in Latin American cooking. Marin credited his uncle with giving him the moniker in a 2017 interview with NPR, saying, “I came home from the hospital, I was like a couple of days old or something, and my uncle came over and he looked in the crib and he said [in Spanish], ‘Ay, parece un chicharrón.'” You know, that kind of looks like a small chicharrón.
Marin and his family relocated to Granada Hills, California, in 1955, where he went to St. John Baptist de la Salle Catholic School for his basic education. After that, Marin attended Bishop Alemany High School for his senior year, and as a teenager, he began going to folk music performances at the Ash Grove on Melrose Avenue. After that, he attended California State University, Northridge (formerly San Fernando Valley State College), where he was a Phi Sigma Kappa member.
He attended CSUN more than full-time while working nearly full-time at Nordskog Industries in Van Nuys during his second semester. During this time, he also met Timothy Leary at a local Students for a Democratic Society event, who would go on to become a lifetime friend. He was also socially introduced to marijuana through his fraternity, which would play a crucial role in his subsequent film career. He earned his English degree from CSUN in 1968, and soon after, he went on stage with The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa’s band, for an audition.
Marin travelled to Vancouver, British Columbia the day after his audition, hoping to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War, but was not given the job. In Calgary, Alberta, Marin first met his comedy collaborator Tommy Chong.
Cheech Marin Career
Comedy albums and films
In the 1970s and 1980s, Marin appeared in a number of comedy albums and full-length comedies as a member of the wildly popular comedy team Cheech & Chong. While co-writing and acting in all seven of their movies alongside Marin, Tommy Chong directed four of their productions.
Later films and television work
The Shrimp on the Barbie, Tin Cup, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico are just a few of the movies Marin appeared in after Cheech & Chong split up in 1985. He also directed Born in East L.A., The Shrimp on the Barbie, and Tin Cup. In Ghostbusters II, he made a brief appearance as a dock worker. He made his second appearance as a police officer in 2004, as “Officer Salino” in the Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis-starring Christmas with the Kranks adaption of John Grisham’s holiday novel Skipping Christmas.
The voice of the Bundy family’s Briard dog, Buck, was provided by Marin in three episodes of the Fox sitcom Married… with Children: Look Who’s Barking, Change for a Buck, and Assault and Batteries.
When Marin co-starred on the brief The Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace (1992–1993) and later with Don Johnson, Jaime P. Gomez, and Yasmine Bleeth in the police drama Nash Bridges (1996–2001), in which they played San Francisco police-detective partners, he made the transition to full-time television work. He has been actively acting in supporting roles in movies and providing voice work for animated pictures in recent years. After playing an independently affluent landscape designer in a supporting role in Judging Amy, Marin co-starred with Rob Schneider in the CBS sitcom Rob.
Robert Rodriguez frequently works with Marin; they have collaborated on seven projects together, including the latter two films in the Mexico trilogy, the Spy Kids trilogy, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Machete. In particular, Tito the Chihuahua in Oliver & Company (1988), Banzai the hyena in The Lion King (1994), and Ramone in Cars (2006) and its sequels Cars 2 (2011) and Cars 3 (2017) all benefited from his voice work. In 1994’s The Cisco Kid, he also played Pancho, and in Kingdom Hearts II, he returned as Banzai.
In 2020, Marin will be promoting the “Your Actions Save Lives” campaign of the Californian government by urging people to wear masks during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Cheech plays El Confidente, a member of Lodge 55 in Mexico, in multiple episodes of AMC’s Lodge 49.
My Name is Cheech, the School Bus Driver (1992) and My Name is Cheech, The School Bus Driver “Coast to Coast” (1997) are two of Marin’s best-selling albums in the children’s music category. The two albums were issued in both languages. Cheech the School Bus Driver, a book by Marin with illustrations by Orlando L. Ramirez and HarperCollins, was released in July 2007.
Marin provided his voice in 2005 for the animated children’s program Dora the Explorer. He played the Puerto Rican folk figure Juan Bobo in the episode “A Crown for King Juan el Bobo”
Additional television appearances
Late in 2006, Marin sang alongside Peter Frampton, Randy Travis, Clint Black, Aaron Neville, and Al Jarreau in Simon Cowell’s Celebrity Duets. He was the fourth person to be taken out.
In the popular television series Lost, Marin played Hurley’s father, David Reyes, in recurrent episodes.
On March 1, 2010, he and his comedic buddy Tommy Chong co-hosted WWE Raw in Oklahoma City.
On the secret track “Earache My Eye” on Korn’s album Follow the Leader, Marin also sings.
He had an appearance in the Expecting a Miracle movie on the Hallmark Channel in 2009.
Aisha Tyler and Anderson Cooper were defeated by Marin on Celebrity Jeopardy!’s Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational on March 18, 2010. Cooper acknowledged that Marin “crushed” him. Michael McKean defeated Marin in the final on May 6-7, but Marin also won his semifinal round in early May. He had previously triumphed in the 1992 Celebrity Jeopardy! competition.
He took part in Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off on the Food Network in January 2012 along with eight other famous people. In the third week of the competition, he was eliminated.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry
Chicano art is Marin’s passion, and he began amassing it in the 1980s. His private collection of artworks has been exhibited in two national touring exhibitions. In his opinion, it’s crucial to “use his celebrity status to draw attention to what he saw as an undervalued and underrepresented style of art.” The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry was built in the City of Riverside, California, in partnership with the Riverside Art Museum, and it will open on June 18, 2022.
The largest collection of Chicano art in the world, Marin will donate approximately 700 items from his collection. The center will serve as a venue for the exhibition and study of Chicano art, and it is anticipated to garner attention on a global scale.
Cheech Marin Other interests
Despite previously disliking the game, he has become a passionate golfer. This changed after he co-starred in the golf-themed comedy Tin Cup. On a unique course constructed on his private property, Marin also practices horse archery.
Cheech (part of GLE Brands Inc.) and Heritage Cannabis Holdings Corporation (CSE: CANN) signed a contract on April 19, 2018, granting Cheech exclusive rights to use cannabis and cannabis-related products under the Private Stash brand across Canada for a period of two years. The contract will automatically renew for an additional year upon reaching certain milestones.
He played the part of Chef Louis at the Hollywood Bowl in The Little Mermaid: An Immersive Live-to-Film Concert Experience in 2019.
Cheech Marin Personal life
Darlene Morley, who co-produced The Corsican Brothers with Cheech & Chong and had appeared in supporting roles in earlier Cheech & Chong movies under the name Rikki Marin, and Marin were married in 1975. In 1984, the couple split after having a single child. In 1986, Marin wed the artist Patti Heid; they went on to have two children and later separated. On August 8, 2009, Marin wed his longtime partner, Russian pianist Natasha Marin, in a private ceremony at their house.
California’s Malibu is home to Marin.
Cheech Marin Trivia
He was the inaugural winner of Celebrity Jeopardy.
His father has served with the LAPD for 30 years.
Prior to his role in Tin Cup (1996), he detested golf; today, he is an enthusiastic player.
He is of Mexican heritage, one of the foremost collectors of Mexican and Mexican-American art, and has contributed to the growth of Chicano art on the West Coast. He has also written at least one book on the subject.
The word “Cheech” comes from the spicy fried pork skin delicacy known as chicharron.
The word “Cheech” comes from the spicy fried pork skin delicacy known as chicharron.
at California State University, Northridge, majored in English.
has a Taylor guitar that he plays.
eight times, beginning with Desperado (1995), continuing with From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Spy Kids (2001), Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003), Grindhouse (2007), and Machete (2010).
participated in the Celebrity Ryder Cup All-Star Cup golf tournament from 2005 in Newport, Wales, UK.
resides in the Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco
is a member of the fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa
speaks Spanish with ease.
serves on the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s board.
‘Best Supporting Actor’ award at the 2016 New York City Cannabis Film Festival for his work in Dark Harvest (2016).
Natasha Rubin plays the piano classically as a wife.
He is one half of the comic team known as Cheech & Chong with Tommy Chong.
What is Cheech Marin nationality?
Mexican-American parents Elsa (née Meza) (1923-2010), a secretary, and Oscar Marin (1922-2015), an LAPD police officer, welcomed Marin into the world on July 13, 1946, in South Los Angeles, California. Marin has a medically corrected cleft lip from birth.
What is Cheech Marin known for?
Actor, author, director, speaker, musician, collector of fine art, comedian, etc. Cheech Marin is a contradiction in the entertainment industry. He is most known as one half of the wonderfully irreverent, satirical, counterculture, no-holds-barred duo Cheech and Chong, which is currently on tour.
How long has Cheech been married?
Cheech Marin was born in Los Angeles, California, on July 13, 1946. He is an author and actor best known for his roles in Up in Smoke (1978), Tin Cup (1996), and Born in East L.A. (1987). Natasha Rubin and him have been wed since August 8, 2009.
How many children did Cheech Marin have?
Richard Anthony Marin was born on July 13, 1946, in Los Angeles, California; he is the son of Oscar and Elsa (Meza) Marin. Richard Anthony Marin married Rikki Mae Morley on November 1, 1975; they divorced; he then wed painter Patti Heid in 1984; they have three children. B.A. in education from California State University, Northridge.
What is Cheech short for?
Cheech, Marin’s nick name, is short for “chicharron,” a popular snack and ingredient in Latin American cooking.
