Mark McManus

McManus was born in Hamilton, Scotland, and moved to Hillingdon in London, England when he was three years old, until he moved again at the age of 16 to Australia, where he performed in amateur theatre groups that led him to becoming a professional actor. He appeared in the children's TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and had a guest appearance in the long-running Australian police drama Homicide. He also starred in Tim Burstall's feature film 2000 Weeks (1969), which was the first full-length Australian-produced feature made in Australia since Charles Chauvel's Jedda in 1954.

McManus also appeared in the American-produced historical drama Adam's Woman and co-starred with Mick Jagger in the Tony Richardson film version of the Ned Kelly story, Ned Kelly (both 1970).

McManus returned to the UK in 1971, and was known to a wider audience when he played roles such as Harry Carter in The Brothers and Sam Wilson, a coal miner in the 1973 TV series Sam. McManus appeared opposite Peter O'Toole in the 1976 TV movie Rogue Male, and starred as a dour Scots police officer, Jack Lambie, in Strangers, a role he reprised as a guest star in the spin-off, Bulman.^[1] McManus also had roles in productions at the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre.^[2]

McManus was also a boxer before he moved into acting.^[2][3][4] He is not to be confused with the boxer of the same name (born 1974) from Basildon in England.

McManus drank heavily and, after several years of declining health, died from an alcohol-related illness.^[5] He was hospitalised with severe jaundice in May 1994^[6] and died in Glasgow of pneumonia brought on by liver failure^[7] on 6 June 1994, aged 59, eight months after the death of his second wife Marion. In the last two years of his life McManus had also lost his mother, his brother and his two sisters.^[2] The actor was the first person to be posthumously awarded the Lord Provost of Glasgow's Award for Performing Arts.^[8]

McManus's final Taggart episode was "Hellfire" (Series 11 Episode 1). After his death, his character was given an on-air funeral in the final episode of the 11th series, "Black Orchid".

Mark McManus's father was Pete McManus but it was his Uncle (Jim McManus) family that fostered but never legally adopted Brian Connolly, later lead singer of 1970s glam rock band The Sweet. The foster cousins noticed a resemblance between them and supposed that they may have shared a father.