Marc Singer

The Origin of Sheet Music

Marc Singer was born in Vancouver in 1948, surrounded by batons and sheet music. His father was a conductor and his mother a pianist. But young Marc preferred the theater stage to the orchestra pit of classical music.

He arrived in California intending to perform Shakespeare and ended up in front of a movie camera. In his early years he worked in minor television productions where his athletic build caught the eye of casting directors.

Marc Singer was the face of a fantasy that no one expected to succeed.

In 1982, he starred in The Beastmaster under the direction of Don Coscarelli. No one on the crew had much faith in a story about warriors who talk to ferrets and eagles. The shoot was a grueling ordeal of mud and real animals who did not always follow the script's instructions.

The film had a modest run in U.S. theaters. But the home video market and cable television changed its fortunes.

Invading Lizards and Massive Success

HBO aired the movie so many times that viewers started joking about the channel's initials. They said it stood for Hey, Beastmaster is On. Singer became a familiar name to a generation that enjoyed unapologetic B-movie fantasy.

And then the visitors arrived.

In 1983, he played Mike Donovan in the miniseries V. He was the journalist who filmed the aliens devouring mice and led the human resistance against the occupation. The audience was massive across much of the world.

Singer played the classic all-American hero, square-jawed and honest-eyed. But the show's success did not guarantee him a spot on Hollywood's A-list. So he chose to keep working steadily on the small screen.

The Actor's Refuge

During the nineties, his career was split between direct-to-video sequels and collaborations on prestige series. In 1992, he lent his voice to the character of Man-Bat in Batman: The Animated Series. That voice work showed that his presence went beyond his physical ability.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2011, he returned to the universe that brought him worldwide fame, with a appearance in the remake of V. He played Lars Tremont in a direct nod to fans of the eighties original. It was a nostalgic move that closed a professional cycle of nearly thirty years.

In 2015, he joined the cast of Arrow to play General Matthew Shrieve across five episodes. It was his last major foray into the superhero genre before he drastically slowed his pace of work.

Singer lives in California and has kept his private life away from the press spotlight since his wife's death in 2014. The final budget for The Beastmaster was $8 million.