He grew up with his 15-year-old mom who was later tragically killed in a case that puzzled police for decades.
It could have broken him – but instead, this star has made an impressive career in Hollywood and even being named as one of TV’s ”Ten Sexiest Men.”
A key witness to his mom’s murder
October 26, 1961, Waterbury, Connecticut. A future Hollywood heartthrob enters the world. His parents are Catholic teens: Diane, an Italian-American just 15, and Richard, an 17-year-old Irish-American. The boy’s name is Mark.
Sadly, his parents split before Mark even turned two. By the age of five, he had already lost his mother. Diane was shot in the head in February 1967, and though our star didn’t actually see the shooting, he was a key witness. At the time, Mark had been kicked out of the house by his mother’s boyfriend, a known gangster and heroin addict — just moments before the gun went off.
Police and paramedics rushed to the scene, and Diane was carried out on a stretcher with a fatal gunshot to her heavily bandaged head. For decades, her death was officially ruled an accidental shooting, but that story would change in recent years, revealing shocking new details.
”I’m not happy that all this happened to me, but I learned from it,” he once said.
After their mother’s murder, the future Hollywood star and his sister went to live with their maternal grandmother, Avis, in Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury was a tough, working-class neighborhood, and he recalls that his family was one of the few white families in the area.
Felt awkward as a teen
As a teenager, he felt awkward and out of place, even joking about his “Dorothy Hamill hairdo.” To find confidence, he started mimicking his acting heroes, icons like Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart, adopting their mannerisms and style.
Meanwhile, his father was living a very different life, running the West Fourth Street Saloon in Greenwich Village, New York City.
“Dad was essentially a 21 or 22-year-old bachelor, just trying to find himself,” the actor once explained during an interview with Irish America. “It just made sense at the time for me and my sister to stay with my grandmother rather than go with my Dad.”
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As a teenager, Mark often worked in his father’s bar, helping out by serving drinks and breaking up fights. By then, his dad, Richard, was known to locals as “Mac” at the West 4th Street Saloon in Greenwich Village. Starting at age 13, he spent more and more time with his father, first as a busboy, then as a waiter, and eventually as a bartender.
”I was not big. I’ve been punched out many many times,” the actor told Movieline magazine in 2000.
For a while, Mark even shared an apartment with his dad, soaking in the sights, sounds, and characters of the bar, learning about life behind the counter firsthand.
The actor remembers that he and his father were more like brothers than father and son, which wasn’t surprising given that his dad was only 17 years older than him. They shared a lot of fun together — perhaps too much — filled with late nights, comings and goings, and older women.
Eventually, his father decided it was time for Dylan to have his own place. Soon after, it was time for him to start a new chapter; his acting career.
His father’s third wife changed everything
When Mark was 15, he gained a new stepmother. His father’s third wife, the famous playwright Eve Ensler, would change the course of his career. She saw something in her stepson that convinced her Mark had real potential as an actor.
When Eve suggested he should become an actor too, it just clicked for him. He recalled serving actors like John Belushi, William Hurt, and Ray Sharkey, who often came into the bar where he worked. Mark thought, “Wow, what a life.”
He told his father he was quitting the bar life.
“My old man was always supportive; he never questioned it,” he remembered. “He always believed in me, he just said, ‘Go ahead and do it.”
Mark soon landed a role in one of his stepmother’s Off-Broadway plays. His father, supported him financially through Fordham University, where he studied acting.
He later joined the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, performing in numerous productions, including one opposite Joanne Woodward. His work in Neil Simon’s play Biloxi Blues caught the attention of the casting agent for Hamburger Hill, launching his professional career.
Sad truth behind the name change
Over the years, Mark has often praised his stepmother, and it’s clear they shared a very close bond — so close, in fact, that she influenced not only his career but also the name he would become known by.
Along the way, S.A.G. regulations required Mark to change his professional name. He chose Dylan, partly as a tribute to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, but also because of a personal family story that left a lasting mark.