Tyler St. Mark is a multi-talented actor, writer, and producer who has experienced an array of careers in half a century. During this time, he has also been a performer, a model, a retail manager, a lifeguard, a swimming coach, a paramedic, a nightclub pianist, a press agent, a media & marketing specialist, a journalist, comic, and an independent book publisher.

In recent years, he has received critical acclaim and a literary following for his short fiction. He has published five short stories, several dozen commentaries, collaborated on numerous screenplays, and was nominated three years in a row for the West Coast Magazine Award for Best Short Fiction.

Even more recently, Tyler entered his first solo screenplay in the Hollywood Screenplay Contest and was chosen in the comedy category. Several of his screenplays have been optioned for feature film and is currently working on a book series as well as stage production based upon one of those film properties.

St. Mark is a mid-century “boomer” who was born in Tucson, Arizona and the third of four siblings from parents whose families have notable histories in ranching.

Tyler’s great-grandfather was Levi Manning, Mayor of Tucson and Surveyor General of Arizona, who built the Canoa Ranch (where films like ”The Westerner” and “Oklahoma” were filmed), while Tyler’s great-aunt, Leonie Boutall, built Rancho Nezhone, a celebrated guest ranch which played host to countless Hollywood stars and during the 1930s & 40s.

Both of Tyler’s parents were multi-talented professionals; his mother was an artist, illustrator, and draftsperson and his father was a rocket engineer and hobby craftsman. Both parents helped produce and performed in the annual Gridiron Shows sponsored by the Tucson Press Club during the 1950s and 60s before moving the family to California where Tyler’s father quickly advanced in the aerospace industry while his mother worked in city planning.

St. Mark has been connected to the entertainment industry in one way or another for most of his life. He was an accomplished stage actor in his adolescence , appearing in community and regional theatres across Southern California and winning several regional acting awards.

Tyler attended UCLA in Los Angeles and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, and was cast in the title role of the National Touring Company production of “You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and was also featured in the West Coast Touring Company of “The Fantasticks.”

In 1975, he debuted in Los Angeles in “Butterflies Are Free” at the prestigious Showplace Theatre, and appeared in several films and movies for television before, at the ripe age of 21, giving his last professional performance at the Westwood Playhouse where he portrayed the legendary film comic, Stan Laurel (at the age of 75), in the acclaimed one-man show, “An Evening With Mr. Laurel.”

St. Mark left the entertainment industry in his early twenties to pursue his other passions as a professional lifeguard and coach.

After obtaining his credentials as an EMT2, Advanced Life Support Technician, Ambulance Driver, and CPR Instructor Trainer; he taught Advanced Lifesaving, Advanced First Aid, and CPR to local lifeguard, rescue, and law enforcement personnel at high schools, colleges, and Red Cross facilities in Orange County.

After a distinguished career as both a county and community lifeguard (the youngest officer in the USLA achieve the rank of Chief), St. Mark decided to explore a less hazardous career as a swimming coach. For several years, he coached several private community swim teams as well as creating one of first custom water safety programs in America for infants and children.

Through St. Mark’s special custom-conditioning program, several hundred infants and small children in the Orange County area were taught to survive in deep water by floating or swimming.

In addition, St. Mark helped produce an array of community water-safety events and local swimming competitions as well as several sport and surfing product expositions which gradually led him into the public relations and marketing field.

St. Mark’s talent for producing special events caught the eye of professional event coordinators in Los Angeles and, with his early experience in the entertainment industry, Tyler was eventually recruited to coordinate media for a publicity firm in Los Angeles which represented various film and television celebrities.

St. Mark's amazing ability to create distinctive, eye-catching, and successful media campaigns led to his joining a commercial advertising and public relations agency in Santa Monica, where he received expert training from industry veterans known legendary as “The Ad Men” and “The Chrysler Boys.”

Tyler eventually left commercial advertising to creatively direct public service campaigns with a West Hollywood advertising & public relations firm, and eventually founded his own company which focused on unusual or provocative products and services.

St. Mark's unique marketing campaigns have been featured in TIME MAGAZINE, PEOPLE MAGAZINE, and PLAYBOY while his advertising and public relations efforts received both local and national media attention. He created and produced Los Angeles County's first AIDS awareness campaign featuring a diminutive spokescharacter named "Mother" (portrayed by Zelda Rubinstein) who was integrated into AIDS education campaigns worldwide.

It was St. Mark who coined the expression, "Play Safely," in this warm-hearted, landmark campaign, and dramatically altered the marketing strategy for AIDS awareness across America in 1984.

Among St. Mark's most inspiring achievements was the creation of the PWA Memorial Bracelet; a simple gold or silver wristband engraved with the name, age, and date of passing of men, women and children struck down by AIDS. Over a half -million bracelets were produced and distributed nationwide during the early years of the AIDS epidemic and, in 1985, St. Mark’s “AIDS Bracelet” became the first national AIDS memorial and has since inspired countless other commemorative bracelet programs worldwide.

That same year, Tyler St. Mark also conceived, produced, and co-directed the first public service spots for AIDS Awareness to air nationally in the United States.

In 1989, he accepted a special invitation by the Chancellor of Stanford University to speak before the Stanford Graduate School of Business on "Marketing AIDS Awareness in America."

He was also honored on World AIDS Day in 1994 as the keynote speaker for California Institute of the Arts, whose main library has exhibited memorabilia from his landmark campaigns.

That same year, St. Mark partnered with landmark author Patricia Nell Warren to co-found Wildcat International, an independent publishing company offering the finest in quality gay literature.

For two decades, St. Mark was instrumental in the design, packaging, promotion, and marketing of Wildcat's books, in addition to running the entertainment division whose function was to explore and develop film and other ancillary rights for their company’s top-selling titles.

In early 2012, after publishing nine books and nearly twenty years in the industry, St. Mark and Warren dissolved their partnership.

By now, St. Mark had produced or consulted upon a number of film documentaries including “The Last First Comic,” (2010) “Laurel & Hardy, Their Lives & Magic,” (2011) and “The Celluloid Cowboy” (2012). Tyler had come full circle and was now back in the entertainment industry devoting most of his time consulting on independent films and documentaries.

For this purpose, St. Mark formed “St. Mark & Associates,” a film consulting consortium comprised of numerous veteran film, television, and theatre colleagues, who are expertly able to provide impeccable insight and support to those independent filmmakers needing pre-production, production, and/or post-production assistance on their film or documentary projects.

Although his veteran experience both in public service and the entertainment industry have afforded him a unique and well-rounded education, St. Mark attributes his previous achievements and more recent literary success to the unusual range and variety of vocations he has sought out and mastered over the years.

“I never set out to do so many different things,” he says earnestly. “In some ways, I wish I had chosen one field and stuck with it but then I would stumble upon some new field of interest, embrace it with immense interest and passion, and then find myself in the middle of a whole new and exciting career adventure. After all, isn’t that what life should be—an exciting adventure?!”