He is best known for playing the lead role in the 1970 film Zabriskie Point, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, in which he was cast despite his lack of acting experience.

He was discovered in Boston by Sally Dennison, Antonioni's assistant and casting director, while in the middle of a shouting match turned violent at a Charles Street bus-stop.

As Antonioni toured the U.S., experiencing culture clash firsthand and shooting background footage, Dennison saw Frechette, a carpenter, scream and throw a flowerpot at a woman on the street.

The director immediately cast Frechette, a non-actor, in the film's leading role as an innocent student pursued by the police for the murder of a policeman during a college uprising.

[4] Despite the film's being a critical and box office bomb, Frechette enjoyed a period of considerable publicity, appearing on the covers of Look[5] in November 1969 and Rolling Stone on March 7, 1970.

[7] Frechette appeared in two other films made in Italy and Yugoslavia, Many Wars Ago (Uomini Contro, 1970) and La Grande Scrofa Nera (1971).

We wanted to make a film, to adapt a part of Crime and Punishment because we felt that America was like a Dostoevsky-type world.

I was watching TV in the evening when it was announced that ... Mark Frechette attempted to rob a bank at gunpoint ... and was arrested.

"[9] Frechette died in prison on September 27, 1975, during an apparent weightlifting accident when a 150-pound (68 kg) barbell fell on his neck and he suffocated.