Mark Frankel

Mark David Frankel (13 June 1962 – 24 September 1996) was a talented English actor whose promising career was tragically cut short at the age of 34. Born and raised in London, Frankel came from a rich and culturally diverse family background. His father, David Lionel Frankel, was a former Royal Air Force pilot, while his mother, Grace Marshall, was an Iraqi Jew from Baghdad. His father's family were Jewish emigrants from Poland and Russia who settled in the East End of London. Music ran deep in his lineage, with his grandmother being a concert pianist and his grandfather a prominent violinist and conductor. Frankel attended Frensham Heights School before pursuing acting, a passion that began remarkably early when he was cast in his first professional theatre role at just 10 years old. However, he temporarily stepped away from acting at age 16 to focus on his studies. When he returned to the craft at 20, he immersed himself in amateur dramatics and trained with Jack Walzer from the Actors Studio in New York, eventually earning a full three-year scholarship to the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Frankel's breakthrough came shortly after graduation when he won the lead role of Michelangelo in the TNT mini-series A Season of Giants, beating out more than 80 actors for the part. The role took him to Italy for five months, where he worked alongside distinguished actors including F. Murray Abraham, John Glover, Ian Holm, and Steven Berkoff. He went on to deliver a memorable performance in the critically acclaimed British film Leon the Pig Farmer (1993), which won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Charlie Chaplin Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Relocating to Hollywood after this success, Frankel landed the role of Simon Bolt in the TV series Sisters and starred in Kindred: The Embraced for the Fox Network. His other notable credits include For Roseanna with Jean Reno and Mercedes Ruehl, Solitaire for Two with Amanda Pays, and television appearances in Maigret opposite Michael Gambon, Young Catherine with Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Plummer, and Fortune Hunter. On the London stage, he impressed in productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Days of Cavafy, Agamemnon, Little Hands, Sentimental, and A Private Death. In 1991, he married French advertising executive Caroline Besson, with whom he had two sons, Fabien and Max. The younger son was born after Frankel's tragic death in a traffic collision in Chiswick, London, on 24 September 1996, when he was struck by a lorry. His funeral at Kingston Liberal Synagogue was attended by friends and colleagues including actor Jason Isaacs and director Gary Sinyor.