Frank Ashmore

Frank Ashmore
PerformerTOS
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Portrays:	Ortega
Date of Birth:	June 17, 1945
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month!
Age:	80
Nationality:	USA
Related Media
		@ BW Media
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IMDb profile

Frank Ashmore (born Frank Howard Stell II on June 17, 1945) is an American actor who portrayed Ortega in Original Series'"Murder on the Rising Star". Born in El Paso, Texas, Ashmore has built a career spanning five decades in film, television, voice acting, and theater.

Career

Early Television and Film Work

Ashmore began his professional acting career in the early 1970s, initially credited under the stage name Frank Stell. His television work in this period included guest appearances on series such as Happy Days and The Bob Newhart Show.

Ashmore's breakthrough into mainstream comedy came in 1980 with a supporting role as flight engineer Victor Basta in the disaster parody film Airplane!, directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. He reprised a similar supporting role in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) as Controller #3.

His film work during this period also included roles in Gable and Lombard (1976), Invisible Strangler (1978), and Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979).

V and Science Fiction Stardom

Ashmore's most significant role came in 1983 when he portrayed Martin, a sympathetic member of the alien Fifth Column resistance, in the NBC miniseries V. The mini-series was one of the most successful to air on American television. Ashmore later reflected on the unexpected fan response to the character: "So I continued along in the six-hour series when all of a sudden I started getting this tremendous onslaught of mail from fans. I had no idea that my character was having that kind of effect on people."

He continued the role in V: The Final Battle (1984). When V transitioned to a weekly series in 1984, the show's new producers faced challenges with the character. According to Ashmore, "A whole new group of people with new creative energy were brought in. They looked at what they had and saw Donovan, Ham Tyler, Diana, Julie and so on. And then they had this guy Martin who was an alien and an exposed traitor and they really didn't know how to write for him."

Supervising producer Garner Simmons explained the decision to eliminate the character:

Martin was obviously an on-going problem for us. If we, as humans, have access to someone who has a lot of information on the aliens, then we get into these murky areas of how much do we know, how much do they know, how much do they know we know, and where do we draw the line? Feeling that a believable war requires a certain number of secrets on both sides, the producers realized that Martin had to be eliminated, but in an explainable fashion.

—Garner Simmons , Starlog 1984 interview

Martin was killed off in the pilot episode of V: The Series, leading to significant fan backlash against NBC. The network subsequently brought Ashmore back to play Martin's twin brother Philip, a Supreme Commander who later became a Fifth Columnist. Philip appeared in seven episodes of the series.

Actor Marc Singer, who worked extensively with Ashmore in the V franchise, later commented on their on-screen dynamic: "When we stood on the set and played out scenes together, each of us had a very clear understanding that what we were promoting were two massive movements in contradiction to each other."

Continued Television and Film Work

Throughout his career, Ashmore has made guest appearances on over two dozen television series. His television credits span multiple genres, including appearances on Touched by an Angel, The West Wing, and Hawaii Five-0.

In 1981, he appeared on the daytime dramas Days of Our Lives as a hitman hired to kill the character Julie Williams, and on General Hospital as Monica Quartermaine's private investigator.

His film work continued with roles in Monster in the Closet (1986) and the independent thriller Extracted (2012). In 2015, he appeared as Garcia in the psychological science fiction film 400 Days, which centered on four astronauts in a simulated deep space mission.

In 2010, Ashmore took a recurring role as Ollie, the pirate-speaking manager of Cheesybeards restaurant, in six episodes of season 4 of the web comedy series The Guild.

Voice Acting

Beginning in 2010, Ashmore expanded into voice acting for video games. His most prominent voice role is Leone "Leo" Galante, a mobster in the Electronic Arts video game Mafia II (2010), which he reprised in Mafia III (2016).

Additional video game credits include voicing Jimmy the Grape in The Darkness II (2012), Austin Buckell in Dead Space 3 (2013), and Dr. Hara in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2013).

Theater Work

Ashmore has maintained an active theater career alongside his screen work. He won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Featured Performance in 2005. In 2009, he received a Best Actor nomination from the 168 Hour Film Project, a Christian film festival, for his performance in the short film "Stealing Home".

Personal Life

Ashmore was married to Shannon Monahan from 1983 to 2009, with whom he had one child. He was previously married to Jamesie L. Allen from January 8, 1972 to August 10, 1983, with whom he also had one child.

References