Mark Sheppard is an English actor and musician, born in London of an Irish-German background to actor W. Morgan Sheppard. At 15, he became a professional musician and enjoyed many years as a recording and touring artist with bands including Robyn Hitchcock, the Television Personalities and the Irish group Light a Big Fire. Mark played drums on Light a Big Fire’s second album. As a session musician, he recorded albums for many groups throughout Europe, and eventually moved to the United States.
Mark was invited to audition for the American production of the play Cock and Bull Story (directed by Midnight Express author Billy Hayes), for which he won numerous awards, including the 1992 L.A. Drama Critics’ Circle award and the LA Weekly and Dramalogue awards.
His television work includes The X-Files, the Jerry Bruckheimer action series Soldier of Fortune, guest-starring and recurring roles on The Practice, The Invisible Man, Special Unit 2, JAG, Star Trek: Voyager, The Chronicle, Monk, Las Vegas, CSI: NY, Chuck and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, among others. Mark played a demon named Arnon on Charmed, and Badger, a semi-comical cockney-style crime boss in the Joss Whedon show Firefly. He was later cast again in another Joss Whedon show, Dollhouse, as Paul Ballard’s dismissive FBI superior. He has appeared as a villain in season five of 24 and as Patricia Arquette’s serial-killer nemesis on Medium. He appeared as Romo Lampkin in seasons three and four of Battlestar Galactica, and had a recurring role as Manservant Neville in the short-lived cult hit The Middleman. He has been seen as Anthony Anthros on Bionic Woman, as Sterling, the nemesis character on Leverage, and as bank robber Tom Prescott on Burn Notice. He appeared in the pilot episode of White Collar as a villainous master forger (a role he later reprised) and in Chuck as the Director of the Ring criminal organisation. More recently, he appeared in the SyFy series Warehouse 13 as Regent Benedict Valda and in Doctor Who as Canton Everett Delaware III. This was the first time Sheppard had appeared in a British TV series.
Mark’s film credits include the Jim Sheridan film In the Name of the Father, starring opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson as Guildford Four member Patrick Armstrong; the romantic comedy Lover’s Knot; the Russian historical drama Out of the Cold; the thriller Unstoppable; and with Heather Graham and Jeremy Sisto in the dark independent, Broken. He also starred in Megalodon and New Alcatraz. He directed his father, W. Morgan Sheppard, in the film Room 101 and co-starred with him in the psychological thriller Nether World.
Three times Mark has been cast with his father as the same character, each playing the character at different ages: Canton Everett Delaware III in Doctor Who, war criminal Mercin Jarek a.k.a. “Mr. Pain” in NCIS, playing the younger version of his father’s character, and Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island, which Mark also directed.
Recently Mark has appeared in MacGyver, Walker : Independence and Doom Patrol as the chaos magician Willoughby Kipling. And then of course Mark co-stars as the King of Hell, our beloved little monster Crowley, on Supernatural.