Date of Birth

17 December 1982, Dallas, Texas, USA

Birth Name

Mark Wayne Salling

Height

6' (1.83 m)

Death

30 December 2018, Los Angeles, California, USA, suicide

Mini Biography

Known for starring as musically-inclined football player Noah "Puck" Puckerman on the show Glee (2009), Mark Wayne Salling was born in Dallas, Texas. He was the younger of two children of Condy Sue (Wherry), a school secretary, and John Robert Salling, Jr., an accountant. He was home-schooled at an early age. Salling was raised in a "strict Christian home" and attended Providence Christian School and Our Redeemer Lutheran during elementary school. He attended, but did not graduate, from Culver Military Academy, and later graduated from Lake Highlands High School in 2001. While in high school, he was a member of the school wrestling team. Music was also an integral part of his teenage years; he often performed in bars despite being underage and participated in school talent shows. After graduating from high school, he attended the Los Angeles Music Academy College of Music in Pasadena, California and began studying guitar, giving guitar lessons to make a living. Mark owned a dog named Noah, which he named after his character on Glee.

He died on January 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

Trivia

• Had an active love of birds and wildlife and volunteered with the James Hunter Wildlife Rescue charity.
• Played the guitar, piano, bass, and drums.
• It took him 8 years to write the songs for his album Pipe Dreams.
• Dianna Agron's nickname for him was 'Ookie'.
• Had a dog named Hank.
• Had a dog named Noah Saw Salling and Lea Michele helped him pick out that name.
• Top 40/70 in Sexiest & Hottest Men in 2011.
• Good friends with Rob Kardashian (Kim Kardashian's brother). They usually hang out together or play golf.
• Good friends of Dianna Agron, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Chord Overstreet.
• Played piano since age five, and could also play drums, guitar, and bass.
• He had English and German, and smaller amounts of Scottish, Dutch, and Irish, ancestry.
• Distant cousin of actress Tiffani Thiessen.
• Originally lied about his age in his Glee (2009) audition -- he said he was 19, but he was really 26. Ryan Murphy finally called him out on this fib, but to Salling's relief his older age was preferred for the role.
• On December 29, 2015 Salling was arrested in connection with possession of child pornography. He was booked in downtown Los Angeles. Police obtained a warrant to search his house in Sunland, California where officers found hundreds of images on his computer. This was not his first brush with the law. He paid an ex-girlfriend $2.7 million for knocking her to the ground after she confronted him with a charge of sexual battery.
• On January 30, 2018, Salling's body was found hanging by rope, a death later ruled as suicide. News of Salling's death broke a few weeks before his sentencing for possession of child pornography.

Quotes

• [on his most memorable moment filming Glee] I can think of two moments. One moment would be shooting a scene with Kristin Chenoweth where she is singing. I was sitting right in front of her and she was just belting it out. She can let loose like no other! She's singing a song and it was pretty much directly to me. I was sitting right in front of her and she was singing it to the group of people I was in. It was one of those moments where I thought, "Wow! How did I end up here?" She is so beautiful and talented.
• [on his hairstyle for Glee] I had knee surgery about four months before the audition, and I cut my hair in a mohawk. I don't know why, but I did. So I decided to do it again for this audition because of this part; maybe it would make me stand out from the rest of the guys. Lo and behold, it worked out. And now I'm stuck with it.
• I've been playing piano since I was 5, and started writing when I was 6 or 7. It was never a revelation I had, it was just what I did. Playing music was always a part of my life, I don't know anything else.
• You don't really have time to watch TV if you work on TV.