November 1996
MARK FRANKEL 1962-1996

Mark Frankel, the British actor best known for his starring role in Leon the Pig Farmer, has died in a motorcycle accident, aged 34. Frankel was born in Surrey and won a scholarship to drama school. After graduating, he garnered rave reviews for his role in Days of Cavalry and won the role of Michelangelo opposite F. Murray Abraham in an American made-for-cable mini-series. The actor spread his career evenly between Britain, where he starred in director Gary Sinyor’s Leon follow-up Solitaire for 2, and Los Angeles, where he starred in the top-rated US show Sisters and took the lead in the action movie Fortune Hunter. The part for which he will be most remembered, however is as Sinyor’s bemused hero Leon, in the former’s witty and finely observed comedy about a Jewish estate agent who discovers that his father is in fact a Yorkshire pig farmer. Frankel’s last film, the comedy Roseanna’s Grave, in which he co-starred with Leon’s Jean Reno, will be released in the UK next year.