Mark Lester

Mark Lester was born in the city of Oxford, to actress Rita Keene Lester and actor and producer Michael Lester (originally Michael Boris Letzer). His father is Jewish and his mother Anglican.[3] Lester was educated at three independent schools: at Corona Theatre School in Ravenscourt Park in West London, followed by Tower House School, a boys' preparatory school near Richmond Park (also in West London), and at Halliford School in Shepperton in Surrey.

At the age of 18 Lester had access to some of his earnings from his films. He bought a Ferrari and a house in Belgravia and went to parties, nightclubs and restaurants, often paying for friends, and taking drugs.[14] After the poor reception of The Prince and the Pauper, Lester gave up acting at the age of 19. In his twenties he became a karate black belt; through this he grew interested in sports injuries, and from there osteopathy.[14] At the age of 28 he took his A-Levels, passing Chemistry and Biology.[15] He became an osteopath, studying at the British School of Osteopathy, and in 1993, Lester opened the Carlton Clinic, an acupuncture clinic in Cheltenham.[16][17]

He is a patron of the theatre charity The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America.[18]

Lester has four children with his first wife, Jane, whom he married in January 1993 and divorced in 2005. In 2006, he married his second wife, a psychiatric nurse.[19][20]

Lester was a close friend of Michael Jackson and is godfather to Jackson's three children.[21] In August 2009, after Jackson's death, Lester gave an interview to the British tabloid newspaper News of the World in which he claimed that he could be the biological father of Paris, the late singer's daughter. Lester claimed to have been a sperm donor for Jackson in 1996, and announced that he was willing to take a paternity test to determine whether he was the father.[22] Brian Oxman, former lawyer for the Jackson family, rejected the claim in a television interview, stating, "The thing I always heard from Michael was that Michael was the father of these children, and I believe Michael."[23] In 2019, Lester stated that he was one of twenty sperm donors for Jackson.[24] Lester also appears in the documentary, Michael Jackson: Chase the Truth, in which he doubts allegations of sexual misconduct that had been made against Jackson by boys who are known to have slept in Jackson's bed on multiple occasions.[25][26]

• Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995. Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, pp. 323–324.
• Dye, David. Child and Youth Actors: Filmography of Their Entire Careers, 1914-1985. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1988, pp. 130–131.

• Mark Lester at IMDb