Marty Belafsky
Marty Belafsky is an actor, born 1975.
Marty Belafsky began working professionally at thirteen, according to his own biography, and the first job that stuck was Louis Plumb on Hull High, an NBC series that did not last. The one people remember came straight after: Crutchy in Newsies (1992), Disney's newsboy musical, which failed in cinemas and then quietly refused to go away.
His teens went into the television of the period, The Wonder Years, Great Scott and Step by Step, plus a film part as Ned Ryan in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993). Then the child-actor problem arrived and the credits change shape.
What follows is a working actor's list, mostly functions rather than characters: Louie in Pearl Harbor, a security guard in America's Sweethearts, a customs agent in Men in Black II, Stan Martin in Funny Money (2006). The exception is A Mighty Wind (2003), where he plays Ramblin' Sandy Pitnik in a folk-music mockumentary, a form that rewards precise small performers more than most comedy does. He crossed into games too, voicing Kent Swanson in Dead Rising (2006).
Movies (8)
TV (1)
Where to start with Marty Belafsky
Almost everyone lands on this page because of Newsies, where Crutchy is the part that kept getting recast on stage decades later. Watch it for the choreography and the strange sincerity, not for the plot.
A Mighty Wind is the best film here by a wide margin, and his Ramblin' Sandy Pitnik is exactly the sort of tiny straight-faced turn that improvisational comedy lives on. Wrestling Ernest Hemingway is the sincere one, a small drama that gave him actual scenes instead of a function.
Pearl Harbor and Men in Black II are spot-the-actor exercises, blockbusters where he holds a uniform and a couple of lines. Funny Money is the late curiosity, a farce built on one very old joke.