The actor Marcus Gilbert, who has died of throat most cancers aged 67, attained sex-symbol standing in two tv variations of Barbara Cartland novels, after which the raunchy drama Riders, primarily based on Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles sequence of books.
Because the bed-hopping Rupert Campbell-Black in Riders (1993), and that includes in round 20 candid intercourse scenes within the mini-series, Gilbert was portraying a cad very totally different from the dashing heroes of Cartland’s hearts-and-flowers tales. The character was a ruthless rival in each the equestrian and romantic stakes to Jake Lovell (performed by Michael Praed), Rupert’s fellow showjumper and the boarding college up to date he bullied.
Rupert Campbell-Black got here proper out of the county set encountered by Cooper following her transfer to the Cotswolds. She mentioned he was a combination of Andrew Parker Bowles, the style designer Rupert Lycett Inexperienced, Michael Howard (the twenty first Earl of Suffolk), and David Somerset (the eleventh Duke of Beaufort) – however burdened that “his shittiness was totally my invention”.
To arrange for the half, Gilbert misplaced half a stone, dyed his hair blond and, with Praed, was taught to experience a horse at Knightsbridge barracks by the Family Cavalry teacher Richard Waygood. His efficiency introduced him fame that included a profitable four-year contract in 1993 for Nescafé commercials, when he and Louise Hunt appeared in Gold Mix advertisements, taking up from Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan.
However Cooper later described the Riders manufacturing as “dreadful” and regarded Rupert as portrayed by Gilbert as a “complete wimp”. It additionally didn’t convey Gilbert long-lasting stardom and he more and more frolicked making company journey and journey documentaries together with his personal manufacturing firm.
He was born in Bristol to Sheila (nee Lucas), a mezzo soprano opera singer, and George, a enterprise government, and grew up in Shoreham, West Sussex. When Marcus was 12, his father and maternal grandparents died in a automotive crash on the way in which to see his mom performing. Marcus, the one one within the automobile to outlive the accident, was admitted to intensive care with a cracked cranium and damaged ribs. “I used to be misplaced and didn’t actually know what to do,” he mentioned in a 2016 interview with the actor-writer Toby Hadoke. After leaving Steyning grammar college with A-levels, he handed an HND course in enterprise research “for my father”. Not having fun with it, he determined to carry out, like his mom, and educated as an actor at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London.
On graduating in 1981, he toured faculties with the Odyssey theatre firm earlier than gaining repertory expertise in Dundee with productions resembling Cabaret, For King and Nation and What the Butler Noticed (all 1982).
Tv introduced him small roles in Diana (1984), Andrew Davies’s adaptation of the RF Delderfield novel a few class-mismatch romance; the US drama Grasp of the Recreation (1984), primarily based on Sidney Sheldon’s novel; and Robin of Sherwood (additionally in 1984), alongside Praed, as Lucifer.
He labored his approach up the forged lists to play the German diplomat Anton von Felseck within the Sherlock Holmes story The Masks of Dying (1984) and Eric von Stalhein, the arch enemy of WE Johns’s flying hero, in Biggles (1986).
On the similar time, Gilbert mentioned, he was “within the body” to play James Bond on display, however misplaced out to Timothy Dalton in 1986. However he was being observed, and landed a starring position in A Hazard of Hearts, a 1987 tv movie adaptation of a Cartland novel. He acted the ruthless Lord Justin Vulcan, who units his sights on the aristocratic Serena (performed by Helena Bonham Carter) after her father gambles away the household fortune, forfeiting her dowry. “The sexiest factor that occurs in it is a kiss, though a Barbara Cartland kiss is extremely suggestive,” he mentioned.
There was additionally a kiss with Lysette Anthony – enjoying an 18-year-old orphan launched into excessive society – when Gilbert starred as Lord Robert Stanford in A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990), tailored from one other Cartland novel. The pair had a short off-screen relationship earlier than Gilbert’s marriage to Homaa Khan in 1992. In 2023, three years after his spouse’s dying from pancreatic most cancers, he renewed his relationship with Anthony.
Gilbert’s profession in movies included performing baddies in Rambo III (1988), alongside Sylvester Stallone, and Military of Darkness (1992), the third within the Evil Useless sequence, and on TV he performed Ancelyn, knight commander of the late King Arthur’s forces, within the 1989 Physician Who journey Battlefield.
After Riders introduced him fame, Gilbert landed solely visitor roles on tv, within the US in Homicide, She Wrote (1994) and The Lazarus Man (1996), and within the UK in Jonathan Creek (1998) and Medical doctors (2001). He additionally performed the younger Viscount Goring within the Oscar Wilde play An Supreme Husband on a theatre tour in 2000, however components quickly dried up.
In consequence he shaped Contact the Sky Productions to make company documentaries and travelogues resembling Kilimanjaro: Six Days (2005), after his ascent of Africa’s highest mountain; Two Males & a Map (2007), about Peru; and Kathmandu: Transitions & Traditions (2018).
Anthony survives him, together with a son, Maxi, and daughter, Aaliya, from his marriage.
