THE TORONTO STAR
March 12, 1993

ENTERTAINMENT

From British Biker to Actor
Jamie Portman

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. - It's not so long ago that Mark Frankel was a teenage South London rebel more interested in motorcycles than making something out of himself.

Today, at 28, he's still into motorcycles - he customizes expensive vintage bikes as a hobby - but he's also an accomplished actor with an astonishing list of credits to his name.

They include the title role of Michelangelo in a four-hour television miniseries about the great artist; a macho Stanley Kowalski in a London stage production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire; a 65-year-old Hollywood studio boss in a revival of the vintage Moss Hart comedy, Once in a Lifetime; and Agamemnon in Aeschylus's 2,500-year-old Greek tragedy of the same name.

Then there's the title role in Leon The Pig Farmer, the eccentric British film which indirectly brought him into the hit NBC drama series, Sisters, in which he plays mysterious billionaire Simon Bolt.

His Leon assignment earned Frankel enough money that he could afford a "reconnaissance trip" to Hollywood last spring to check out American film and TV opportunities.

He was visiting the Warner Bros. lot for an entirely different purpose when a colleague suggested he talk to the producers and casting directors for Sisters. The latter liked Frankel's dark, smoldering good looks and impressive acting talents, but they had no idea how to use them - so Frankel flew back to Britain.

"But within a few days they phoned me, and asked me to come back and be a regular on the show," Frankel says. The show's producers and writers had moved swiftly in concocting a new character, which proved tailor-made for the young Englishman.

"It's a case of Howard Hughes meets James Bond" is one Hollywood pundit's description of the enigmatic but compelling personality of Simon Bolt.

"Well, I think that might be glamorizing him a bit too much," chuckles Frankel over a cup of tea at his publicist's office. "But he is a fascinating character psychologically."

"He's this billionaire recluse, a completely self-made man who comes from this very humble background in England. His father was a small-time magician, performing in church basements and town halls. He suffered the loss of a brother with whom he was very close, and blamed his father for what happened."

"This tragedy made him decide that he never wanted to be powerless, so he came to America while still a teenager to make his fortune, and now he's a billionaire. But he definitely carries a lot of emotional baggage."

Since the series resumed last fall, Simon Bolt and fashion designer Teddy Reed (played by Sela Ward) have become a hot number.

"Simon's a cautious man, so it took him six episodes to make a move on Teddy. And actually it was she who made a move on him! They've definitely met each other's match. It's a relationship that's rather tempestuous, and therefore very exciting.

Frankel comes from an artistically rich family background: His grandfather was a conductor and concert violinist, his grandmother a professional pianist. He was a rebel as a teenager, dropping out of school at 16 to pursue his passion for motorcycles while also trying to earn money playing on the minor pro tennis circuits.

But by the time he was 20, Frankel was becoming goal-oriented. At school, there was only one area in which he excelled - and that was acting. He won a three-year scholarship to London's famed Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts. Within a week of graduating in 1989, he signed for his first professional stage job, and this performance caught the attention of an eagle-eyed casting agent who recommended him for the Michelangelo role in A Season of Giants, the four-hour miniseries produced by the TNT cable network in the U.S.

For Frankel, his career has been moving at a dizzying pace - and this has created some adjustment problems. He's still suffering the culture shock of being in Los Angeles.

"It's like being on the moon. It's so different from Europe. It's so different from anywhere I've been, and I've traveled extensively."

But he has adapted to the grind of a weekly TV series.

"I thought when I first came I'd never cope with the pace. When you're doing a movie or a play or a miniseries, you have a reasonable amount of time. But with Sisters, we shot a one-hour show in seven working days: that's the equivalent of a full-length movie in 14 days.

"My normal preference is to digest things. Because I'm stage-trained, I like a lot of rehearsal." But he loves the offbeat, unpredictable nature of Sisters.

"It's a difficult show to define. It shifts from melodrama to farce to serious drama. I've never seen a show like it. It's constantly on the edge, but that's why I think it's so successful."

Frankel is also proud of his recent British film, Leon the Pig Farmer, and hopes it has exposure in North America.

"It's an all-out comedy about a boy who's the product of artificial insemination. He goes in search of his real father who turns out to be a pig farmer in Yorkshire. As a film it's very much of a loose cannon, which is why it appeals to me!"