Mark-Paul Gosselaar

Actor

Birth Name: Mark-Paul Harry Gosselaar

Birth Date: March 1, 1974

Age: 51 years old

Birth Place: Panorama City, California

Spouses: Lisa Ann Russell

Partners: Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley

Actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar rose from teen idol status on the wildly popular "Saved By the Bell" (NBC, 1989-1993) to steady work as a leading man on a sizable number of television series, including "NYPD Blue" (ABC, 1993-2005) and "mixed-ish" (ABC, 2019- ).

Born Mark-Paul Harry Gosselaar on March 1, 1974 in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Panorama City, California, he was the youngest of four children by Dutch-Jewish and Dutch-Indonesian parents. He began modeling at the age of five years, which led to appearances in television commercials and then guest roles on episodic series like "The Wonder Years" (ABC, 1988-1993).

He made his series regular debut on The Disney Channel's "Good Morning Miss Bliss" (1988-1989), a school comedy with Hayley Mills as a Midwestern junior high teacher. When the series was axed after a single season, NBC, which produced the show for the Disney Channel, retained a portion of its juvenile players - including Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond and Lark Voorhees - and folded them into a new program, "Saved By the Bell."

Anchored around Gosselaar's handsome wisenheimer Zack Morris, "Bell" was broad comedy but played extremely well with young viewers, which ran until 1993, when several of the primary cast members had left the program.

Gosselaar, however, remained faithful to the brand, and reprised a slightly more mature Morris in two TV-movies and a short-lived primetime follow-up series, "Saved by the Bell: The College Years" (NBC, 1993-1994).

The long-running connection to "Bell" proved to be a hurdle for Gosselaar, who struggled to find roles outside of teen-oriented projects; adding insult to injury was growing tension between his mother, who had served as his manager from an early age, over money.

After extricating himself from their arrangement, Gosselaar worked tirelessly to establish himself as a mature actor through roles on the primetime series "Hyperion Bay" (The WB, 1998-1999) and "D.C" (NBC, 2000) and the MTV feature production "Dead Man on Campus" (1999).

In 2001, his efforts paid off when he replaced Rick Schroeder as partner to Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue."

His by-the-book detective, John Clark, Jr., drew from his partner's experience in establishing his own career, which also helped him overcome some personal struggles, most notably with his strict father, who later committed suicide, and the death of a girlfriend that resulted in Clark's own struggles with alcohol.

Gosselaar's stint with "Blue," which ran until the series' conclusion in 2005, helped to establish him as a dependable small screen leading man, which he parlayed into steady work on numerous dramatic and comedy series.

Though many of these lasted a single season, including the Geena Davis political series "Commander in Chief" (ABC, 2005-06) and the legal drama "Raising the Bar" (TNT, 2008-09) - both produced by "Blue's" Steven Bochco - the legal comedy-drama "Franklin & Bash" (TNT, 2011-14), with Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer as unconventional lawyers, ran for four seasons on TNT, and he enjoyed a three-episode arc on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (CBS, 2000-2015), playing against type as a serial killer.

From 2015 to 2019, Gosselaar was cast in four different series - the comedy "Truth Be Told" (NBC, 2015), the critically praised baseball drama "Pitch" (Fox, 2016-17), with Gosselaar as an aging major league pitcher, the TV Land comedy "Nobodies" (2017-18) and the apocalyptic horror/science fiction program "The Passage" (Fox, 2018) for producer Ridley Scott.

Three out of the four ended after a single season on air, but Gosselaar's popularity kept him at the top of casting agents' lists for leading men, as evidenced by his starring role on "mixed-ish" (ABC, 2019), a spin-off of "black-ish" (ABC, 2014- ) with Arica Himmel as the adolescent version of Tracee Ellis Ross's Rainbow Johnson and Gosselaar as her father, who was played by Beau Bridges in the parent series.

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Credits

Actor Guest Producer Director All Credits

Mark-Paul Gosselaar

Actor

Birth Name: Mark-Paul Harry Gosselaar

Birth Date: March 1, 1974

Age: 51 years old

Birth Place: Panorama City, California

Spouses: Lisa Ann Russell

Partners: Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley

Credits

FoundStream

FoundStream

The Portrait

The Jennifer Hudson ShowStream

Access Daily With Mario & Kit

Kid 90Stream

Saved by the BellStream

Saved by the BellStream

The At-Home Variety ShowStream

mixed-ishStream

The Kelly Clarkson ShowStream

Access Daily

Tamron HallStream

The PassageStream

Today 3rd Hour

The Passage: Extras

Access Live

Live with Kelly and Ryan

NobodiesStream

Christmas at Tiffani's

PitchStream

Pitch: Extras

Precious Cargo

Truth Be ToldStream

Celebrity Family FeudStream

Dinner at Tiffani's

HeistStream

Celebrity Name Game

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonStream

The Pete Holmes Show

The Real

Hollywood Game Night

Steve Harvey

Live! With Kelly and Michael

Larry King NowStream

Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23Stream

Dish NationStream

Franklin & BashStream

Franklin & BashStream

Happy EndingsStream

Hide

12 Dates of ChristmasStream

ConanStream

The Talk

Access Hollywood Live

Rizzoli & IslesStream

Lopez Tonight

Watch What Happens Live With Andy CohenStream

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

Raising the BarStream

Chelsea Lately

John From CincinnatiStream

The House Next Door

Commander in ChiefStream

WeedsStream

Robot ChickenStream

Tavis Smiley

Last Call With Carson Daly

Atomic Twister

The Princess and the MarineStream

Beer Money

CSI: Crime Scene InvestigationStream

D.C.

Law & Order: Special Victims UnitStream

Family GuyStream

Hyperion Bay

Dead Man on Campus

Dying to BelongStream

Born Into Exile

Theater Talk

Access Hollywood