A comfortingly disquieting presence

Whatever the medium, comedian mastered the art of always being right for the job

- ROBERT LLOYD

Comedian, actor and artist Martin Mull would refer to show business as a “day job” that allowed him to pursue painting.

For anyone lucky enough to have experienced the long arc of his career, the death of droll, dry, deadpan Martin Mull, Thursday at 80, feels like the end of an era. A writer, songwriter, musician, comedian, comic actor and, out of the spotlight, a serious painter, Mull was a comfortingly disquieting presence — deceptively normal, even bland, but with a spark of evil. Martin Mull is with us, one felt, and that much at least is right with the world.

There was a sort of timelessness in his person. As a well-dressed, articulate young person, he seemed older than his years; in later years, owleyed behind his spectacles, he came across as oddly boyish.

He leaves behind a long, uninterrupted string of screen credits, beginning with Norman Lear’s smalltown soap-opera satire “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and including a regular roles in “Roseanne” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” recurring parts on “Veep” and “Arrested Development,” and guest shots ranging from “Taxi” to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and in such films as “Mr. Mom,” “Clue” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.” And so it seemed he would always be around and working. Even so, his appearances were never quite expected or in the expected place. But he was ever welcome and always right for the job.