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Canadian actor and comedian Martin Short poses for a photograph for his new book "I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend" in Toronto on Friday, November 7, 2014.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press

By the time Martin Short was 22, he'd lost his eldest brother to a car accident, his mother to cancer and his father to a stroke. When he became famous and reporters heard that story, he'd imagine them thinking, "Now I can go to lunch, I've got my angle: Out of the pain came the laughter." He appreciated the headline. But it wasn't true.

"My natural orientation, from my DNA and my upbringing, is to be happy," Short said in a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. "I'm the youngest of five kids from an Irish Catholic family in Hamilton, and everyone was funny and sarcastic. Out of the pain came insight, maybe, but my instinct to have fun and be funny is who I've always been. I definitely have the happy gene."

If happiness were contagious, Short, 64, would be a carrier. He's not only an actor and a comedian, he's a capital-E Entertainer who embodies old-school showbiz and affectionately parodies it at the same time. Ordinary mortals make conversation, but Short has material; he doesn't just talk, he delivers. Watch him slay David Letterman with a bit about meeting Bette Davis; listen to how he disguises carefully honed comic gold inside glee. As we chat, the smile in his voice is audible. He doesn't just make you laugh – he makes you laugh.

His humour is hard to convey because so much of it lies in his delivery. It's something about the way he speeds through some phrases and drags others out, the way he embroiders some ideas and tosses others off. He can get a laugh not only with a line, but also in anticipation of a line. He's talking, and then he pauses for a fraction of a second, and I swear you can feel the joke arrive in him, the way you feel a rush of air before the subway comes.

"I have this bizarre memory, where I can remember, for example, where I was in 1972 in March," he says at one point. "It's not as extreme as people like Marilu Henner, who can remember every single thing they ever ate." (She's the former Taxi star whose perfect memory inspired the TV series Unforgettable.) Then Short pauses, and his voice fills with amusement. I'm going to laugh at what he says next, and he knows it. "I was telling someone this the other day, 'I have that memory, like Marilu,' and then I couldn't remember 'Henner.' So I guess I don't have exactly that." Just like that, I am slain.

Joaquin Phoenix, who plays a soft-boiled private detective opposite Short's cocaine-addled dentist in Paul Thomas Anderson's new surrealistic drama Inherent Vice, has said that trying to keep a straight face in his scenes with Short was the most difficult acting he'd ever done. (The film opens in select cities today.) Anderson likes to shoot a lot of takes without cutting, and he's happy if his actors improvise. But during a night-long driving scene, Short had Phoenix laughing so hard that he kept falling out of the frame.

"No matter what I'd say, whether it deserved a laugh or not, Joaquin could not stop laughing," Short confirms. "Around five in the morning, Paul finally had to say, 'Joaquin! Stop it! We are losing the light!' Like a stern teacher. But the way Paul works, that's exactly what I love. You start something, you improvise, you go again right away, you try something else. You wouldn't call it guerilla filmmaking, but he's not precious with each take. I love that approach, because I believe getting the magic thing is luck."

Short isn't precious about what kind of magic he makes, either. Like a vaudevillian spinning plates, he's always kept multiple careers aloft. He springs from comedy series (SCTV, Saturday Night Live) to movies (Three Amigos, Father of the Bride, Mars Attacks); from movies to theatre (Fame Becomes Me on Broadway, The Producers in L.A.); from theatre back to TV specials and series (the drama Damages, the current sitcom Mulaney).

"I think of it as a Canadian-slash-British career, where you're in all media simultaneously," Short says. "It may look like no one wants you in the movies, but the reality is you're not available. Obviously you're not being asked to co-star with Brando, or you'd make yourself available. But I think a six-minute sketch that kills on SNL is as valid as a 90-minute movie."

He doesn't work to earn the admiration of strangers, or to enhance his self-esteem. He does it because it's a really fun way to make a living, and because "I've always enjoyed the hang of actors and creative types. I go wherever the most fascinating offer is." This year is a good example – and he thinks in school years, by the way; he takes summers off at his Muskoka cottage: "This year I'm on a TV series, I'm promoting a book [his memoir, I Must Say], I'm in Inherent Vice, and in January I start a three-month run on Broadway. I find that a very interesting school year."

No matter what Short is doing, "the operative word is to be joyful that I'm there doing it," he says. "If there are temper tantrums, my reaction is, 'I'll be in my trailer.' Anything but joy shuts me down."

Some of that perspective was honed by the loss of his loved ones, of course. When his brother and mother died, "it was 1970 Hamilton, no one was bringing in the 400 shrinks," Short says. "You had to figure it out for yourself. But I instinctively knew I didn't want to move out of that state without any wisdom gained." When his wife of 30 years, the actress Nancy Dolman, died four years ago (they have three children), Short found himself in the same state. That's why he wrote his memoir, and why he insisted it be about "something meaningful, or it would be a waste of time."

"We're all going to lose everyone, and then we're going to lose ourselves," he continues. "If you pretend that's not happening, you're missing something. Hopefully, after you go through it, you have some insight, you have a leg up on what the point of this all is."

I ask Short for an insight, and again, he makes me laugh: "No matter how much your friends love you, two days later they're saying, 'Oh my god, did someone scratch my car?' That's just where we humans go."

Then he nearly makes me cry. "But I believe that when people pass, they zoom into us and we carry them," he goes on. "My wife Nancy felt she knew my mother and father intimately, and she never met them. My son Oliver constantly impersonates my father. Never met him. It's just from tapes and stories."

And then he can't help himself – he makes me laugh again. The latter part of our conversation has been accompanied by clattering noises; Short's been doing something in his kitchen. "Are you making a sandwich?" I ask.

"I have made an egg and toast sandwich," he replies, mock-grandly. "I love to multitask, and my son is meeting me – we're going to play golf. So I am eating while being interviewed."

Even over the phone, I could hear it: That egg sandwich made him happy.

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