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.
Early life
Marin was born on July 13, 1946 in South Los Angeles, California, to Mexican-American parents Elsa (née Meza) (1923-2010), a secretary, and Oscar Marin (1922-2015), a police officer for the LAPD. Marin was born with a cleft lip, which was surgically repaired. According to Marin, he identifies as Chicano; he speaks some Spanish and often uses it in his movies, but he is not fluent.
Marin's nickname "Cheech" is short for "chicharron", fried pork rind, which is a popular snack and ingredient in Latin American cuisine. 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 , 'Ay, parece un chicharrón.' Looks like a little chicharrón, you know?"
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. 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 local Students for a Democratic Society event, who would become a lifelong friend. Graduating CSUN as a English major in 1968, soon after he auditioned to sing for Frank Zappa's side project Ruben and the Jets. 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. Marin met his future comedic partner, Tommy Chong, in Calgary, Alberta.
