Mark Siegel

Mark Siegel began performing in high school and landed his first acting job soon after graduating, with a summer melodrama company near Minneapolis. He studied theater at the University of Minnesota, spent a year teaching junior high school and another traveling in Europe, then won a place at the Clown College run by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, appearing as a clown in its 1972 season. In New York he appeared in some unsuccessful Off-Broadway shows and a musical that closed in previews. Moving to Los Angeles in 1974, he was hired as a sculptor for The Land of a Thousand Faces, a monster make-up attraction at Universal Studios Tour. Special effects friends helped him win a role in The Crater Lake Monster (1977). Television and commercial parts never built an acting career, but his creature-making did, bringing freelance work on major films and a post as a sculptor, creature-maker and puppeteer at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic.