Mark Sawyer-Dailey

Character actor and teacher Mark Sawyer-Dailey was born in Redford, Michigan in 1950. The son of a Methodist minister and grandson of a high school principal, he was raised in a highly open, liberal and politically active family. After his father's sudden death in 1951, his mother moved the family to Dearborn. Mark made his theatrical debut as the title lead in the kindergarten play "Peter Pickers" and the acting bug bit! Comedy became Mark's acting forte in the years to come. Encouraged by his family, his older brother Paul introduced him to the wonders of movies and he quickly became a life-long aficionado of the The Marx Brothers, and such acting icons as Humphrey Bogart. Graduating from Edsel B. Ford High School in 1968, he attended Eastern Michigan University majoring in Theatre Arts (1972) and studied with life-long mentor Bob McElya, as well as with Dave Florek and Dann Florek. In the summer of 1971 he was accepted into the original National Theatre of the Deaf and began an intensive apprenticeship with the theatre's most prolific teachers -- Linda Bove, Bernard Bragg and Tony-winner Phyllis Frelich. Mark eventually settled (for a while, anyway) in the New England area -- western Massachusettes, to be exact -- where he taught high school theatre, speech and English. Following this he returned to school (Florida State University in Tallahassee) and earned his MFA in directing while working with the likes of Alan Ball. He met actress Zan Sawyer-Dailey while at FSU and they wed in 1977. Sadly, while taking on a year's internship with the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco, he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident and spent nearly a year recuperating from his injuries. Mark and Zan eventually relocated to Ithaca, New York where she became General Manager of the Cornell University Theatre and he a part-time teacher at both Cornell and Ithaca Colleges. They expanded their family around this time by adopting two Korean-born children -- daughter Kyle, born in 1982, and son Tyler Mark, born in 1986. Moving yet again to New York City, Mark managed to find some minor roles on a number of NYC-based soaps as well as print work. On the sly he followed a family tradition (his late father bequeathed to Mark his Santa suit) by portraying Santa Claus for Gimbel's Department store. He was, in fact, the very last Santa employed prior to the store's closing in 1985. After finding jobs at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville (Kentucky), they found along with it some permanence. Zan was hired as an Assistant/Casting Director and Mark an Associate Director of their Apprentice/Intern Program. Mark successfully auditioned and joined the famous theatre's acting company, where he worked until 2003, the year the company was disbanded. A plethora of commercial and voiceover work (including Tri-State) came Mark's way in the late 1980s through the early 1990s while in Louisville. He also ran his own company "Rent-A-Santa" and performed in several one-man historical shows that included Rembrandt, Thomas Edison, William Clark, and even Louis XVI. Making a name for himself in the Kentucky city area by teaching commercial acting and theatre improv (he was affectionately dubbed the "The Grandfather of Louisville's Improv Theatre" and "Louisville's Commercial Guru"), Mark also taught full-time at Louisville's Bellarmine University and earned various teaching awards. Moving back to NYC for a time to try his luck once again, Mark made ends meet for a time as a tour guide. The lack of acting work, however, steered him back to home and hearth (Louisville) in 2007, where he has recently taken up American sign language at the University with the designs of becoming a Theatre Intrepreter. He has appeared in the films In Country (1989) and, more recently, Breaking and Entering (2004).