The surname Marin is of Spanish language origin. In Spanish, it is spelled Marín, with an acute accent on the í.

Cheech Marin
Marin at the 2022 WonderCon
Birth name	Richard Anthony Marin
Born	(1946-07-13) July 13, 1946[1] Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Medium	Film, stand-up, television[2]
Years active	1971–present
Genres	Character comedy, musical comedy, political satire, sketch comedy, stoner comedy
Subject(s)	Latin American culture, drug culture, everyday life, recreational drug use
Spouse	Darlene Morley ​ ​ (m. 1975; div. 1984)​ Patti Heid ​ ​ (m. 1986; div. 2009)​ Natasha Rubin ​ (m. 2009)​
Children	3

Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin (born July 13, 1946) is an American comedian, actor, musician, and activist. He gained recognition as part of the comedy act Cheech & Chong during the 1970s and early 1980s with Tommy Chong and as Don Johnson's partner, Insp. Joe Dominguez, on Nash Bridges. He has also voiced characters in several Disney films, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King, the Cars series, Coco and Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Marin's trademark is his characters' strong Chicano accents, although Marin himself is not fluent in Spanish.^[3][4]

Early life

Marin was born on July 13, 1946, in South Los Angeles, California, to Mexican parents Elsa (née Meza) (1923–2010), a secretary, and Oscar Marin (1922–2015), a police officer for the LAPD.^[5] Marin was born with a cleft lip, which was surgically repaired. Marin identifies as Chicano; he speaks some Spanish and often uses it in his movies, but he is not fluent.^[3][4]

Marin's nickname "Cheech" is short for "chicharron", fried pork rind, which is a popular snack and ingredient in Latin American cuisine.^[6] In a 2017 NPR interview, Marin attributed the nickname to his uncle: "I came home from the hospital, I was like a couple of days old or something, my uncle came over and he looked in the crib and he said [in Spanish], 'Ay, parece un chicharrón.' Looks like a little chicharrón, you know?"^[7]

In 1955, Marin and his family moved to Granada Hills, California, and he attended primary school at St. John Baptist de la Salle Catholic School. Marin then went to high school at Bishop Alemany High School, during which he started to attend folk music events at the Ash Grove on Melrose Avenue as a teenager. Afterwards, he studied at California State University, Northridge (then known as San Fernando Valley State College), where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa.^[8] During his second semester at CSUN, he worked almost full-time at Nordskog Industries in Van Nuys, while enrolled more than full-time as a college student. It was also during this time that he was socially introduced to marijuana through his fraternity, a key feature in his later film career, in addition to becoming acquainted with Timothy Leary at a Students for a Democratic Society campus event, who would become a lifelong friend. Graduating CSUN as an English major in 1968, soon after he auditioned to sing for Frank Zappa's band, The Mothers of Invention. Not being offered the gig during his audition, a day later Marin moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, in order to evade the draft during the Vietnam War.^[9] Marin met his future comedic partner, Tommy Chong, in Calgary, Alberta.^[10]

Career

Comedy albums and films

Main article: Cheech & Chong

As a part of the highly successful comedy duo Cheech & Chong, Marin participated in a number of comedy albums and feature film comedies in the 1970s and 1980s. Tommy Chong directed four of their films while co-writing and starring in all seven with Marin.

Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, 1979

The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry

Marin is an avid collector of Chicano art and started his collection in the 1980s. Two national touring exhibitions have featured works from his private collection. He feels that it's important to "use his celebrity status to call attention to what he saw as an under-appreciated and under-represented style of art".^[17] In collaboration with the city of Riverside, California, and the Riverside Art Museum, Marin established The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry, in the City of Riverside, which opened June 18, 2022. Marin will be donating his collection of over 700 pieces of Chicano art, the largest collection of such art in the world.^[18] The center will provide a location for the presentation and study of Chicano art, and is expected to draw international attention.^[19][20]

Other interests

He is an avid golfer, although he initially disliked the sport until he co-starred^[21] in the golf-themed comedy Tin Cup. Marin also practices horse archery on a special course built on his private land.

On April 19, 2018, Cheech (as part of GLE Brands Inc) signed an agreement with Heritage Cannabis Holdings Corporation (CSE: CANN) to have exclusive rights to use cannabis and cannabis-related products utilizing the Private Stash brand throughout Canada for a period of 2 years, with the agreement automatically renewing for an additional year upon achieving various milestones.

In 2019, he was featured in The Little Mermaid: An Immersive Live-to-Film Concert Experience playing the role of Chef Louis at the Hollywood Bowl.

Personal life

Marin was married in 1975 to Darlene Morley, who co-produced Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers and also played minor roles in earlier Cheech & Chong films under the name Rikki Marin. The couple had one child and divorced in 1984. Marin married artist Patti Heid in 1986; they had two children and have since divorced. Marin married his longtime girlfriend, Russian pianist Natasha Marin, on August 8, 2009, in a sunset ceremony at their home.

Marin resides in Malibu, California.^[22] He is a fan of both the Los Angeles Rams^[23] of the NFL, and the Los Angeles Dodgers of the MLB.^[24]

Filmography

Discography

• Cheech and Chong (1971)
• Big Bambu (1972)
• Los Cochinos (1973), won Best Comedy Recording at the 16th Annual Grammy Awards^[30]
• Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album (1974)
• Sleeping Beauty (1976)
• Up in Smoke (1978)
• Let's Make a New Dope Deal (1980)
• Get Out Of My Room (1985)
• My Name Is Cheech the School Bus Driver (Released October 27, 1992)
• Follow the Leader (1998)

Books

• Marin, Cheech; Hassan, John (2017). Cheech Is Not My Real Name...But Don't Call Me Chong!. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 9781455592340. OCLC 974034992.

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Cheech Marin.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cheech Marin.

• Official website
• Cheech Marin at IMDb
• Cheech Marin discography at Discogs