Rodd Dana

American actor and author Rodd Dana (also credited as Rod Dana or Robert Mark), was born as Roger Neal Francke in Vernal, Utah. He studied at UCLA and then took his first acting steps at the Pasadena Playhouse. Dana began in TV commercials before making his debut on the screen in the 1958 Poverty Row creature feature War of the Colossal Beast (1958) (the 'beast', in this instance, being a 60-foot man). He had several more no-name roles and cameos to his name before becoming temporarily disheartened with show biz. After moving to Rome, he studied medicine for a year, then lost interest in this career path and returned to acting.

Dana appeared in Italian TV ads and eventually found his way to Cinecitta, where he was cast as a Roman soldier of Caesar's entourage in the blockbuster epic Cleopatra (1963). Three years later, now billed as 'Robert Mark' and fluent in Italian, he became the star of a trio of sub-James Bond eurospy thrillers as jet-setting British (!) secret agents (Sicario 77, vivo o morto (1966), Operation White Shark (1966), Silenzio: Si uccide (1967)) and as gunslingers in two spaghetti westerns (Uccidi o muori (1966) and Dio non paga il sabato (1967)). Dana continued to work sporadically as a small part actor and voice dubber in the 70s and 80s.

In 2003, the much-travelled former actor reinvented himself as a writer of fiction, publishing his first novel Conversations with the Devil: Dialogues with the Soul on Amazon, under the nom de plume Jon Christian Eagle. Other books (described on his website as "Sci-Fi, and mind-altering Historical Fantasy"), followed in 2016 (The Portal), 2018 (Magdala Legacy) and 2020 (Orion Files Trilogy).