Martin was born and spent a significant part of her childhood in Washington, D.C. where she still lives and works, graduating from Georgetown Day School. She lived in various foreign capitals as a child, as her father, a United Nations economist, was frequently transferred. She is a graduate of Wellesley College with a degree in English. Before she began the advice column, she was a journalist, covering social events at the White House and embassies; she then became a theater and film critic. Martin is known among Star Wars fans for her less-than-adulatory review of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, which she referred to as a "good junk movie" with "no plot structure, no character ... development, no ... original vision of the future".