In the market for all that is both cerebral and zany about Steve Martin? Look no further than his latest movie.

“Bringing Down the House,” which opened over the weekend, acts as a two-hour showcase for — and much needed reminder of — Martin’s flair for carefully choreographed word-play and off-the-cuff lunacy. But, of course, that’s nothing new.

For more than 30 years now, Martin has toggled back and forth between playing the uptight, put-upon, suburban white guy, and some seriously “wild and crazy” guys, either spewing absurdist plays on words or engaging in some of the most inspired physical comedy this side of Buster Keaton.

But even as Martin has carved a niche as one of Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic and innovative clown-savants, he has suffered a kind of pop-culture identity crisis. On the strength of Martin’s meteoric rise in the 1970s, thanks to an act that offered a little bit of winking social commentary and a lot of loony performance art, his audience just always assumed he would remain in that guise forever.

But he hasn’t. He’s gotten better by varying his act. Ironically, the reward for Martin’s constant versatility as a performer has been a healthy dose of underappreciation.

Pop-culture icons — and the late ’70s Steve Martin was as close to a comic deity as one could be — are indulged many things by their audience, except change. Trouble is, the 57-year-old Martin (who has finally aged into his prematurely white hair) has spent the past 20 years doing nothing “but” changing, altering the outlets for his creativity. He is, perhaps, the lengthiest hyphenate in Hollywood, with a resume that reads stand-up comedian-producer-stage and screen actor-musician-playwright-screenwriter-New Yorker essayist-connoisseur-art collector.

This is the curriculum vitae of the entertainment world’s most unsung Renaissance man. In the next six months, Martin will be available on the big screen (“Bringing Down the House”), the small screen (as the cheeky host of the 75th annual Academy Awards on March 23) and in bookstores (thanks to the publication of his second novella, “The Pleasure of My Company”).

“Steve is doing many things at once. … The range is enormous,” says David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor. “There is no guarantee that a verbal magician like Robin Williams can transfer his talent to paper. Steve can. … I hate to throw the word ‘genius’ around too often, but why not? He really is one.”

Steve Martin’s most taken-for-granted talent is probably his physical comedy. But not since Martin’s own early idols — Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Jerry Lewis — has the cinema witnessed a comedian more in command of his body.