Playwright
Don McKellar was born on 17th August 1963 in Toronto, Canada. Beginning his career in the theatre at a young age McKellar co-founded Childs Play Theatre, and went on to study English and theatre at the University of Toronto. In 1989, he co-founded the Augusta Company with Daniel Brooks and Tracy Wright, then moved into feature films writing the screenplay for Bruce McDonald’s film ‘Roadkill’ (1989).
McKellar has continually collaborated on and produced engaging and provocative work in film, TV and theatre – whether acting, writing, directing or all three. He made his directorial debut in 1992 with two short films, ‘Blue’ (starring David Cronenberg) and ‘Bloody Nose’, then in 1998 completed ‘Last Night’, his feature directing debut (which he also wrote and4 starred in), for which he won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. He continued directing with his TV series ‘Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays’ in 2012 and is currently working on a remake of La Grande Séduction’.
He has numerous screenwriting credits to his name including the screen adaptation of ‘Blindness’ from Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago’s novel, co-writing the critically acclaimed ‘Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould’, ‘Red Violin’ and Bruce McDonald’s early films ‘Roadkill’ and ‘Highway 61’.
Particularly memorable for his acting roles as anti-hero,TV-watching agoraphobic Curtis in 2 seasons of ‘Twitch City’, voicing the character ‘Jack’ in 5 seasons of Odd Job Jack and as pretentious theatre director Darren Nicholls in ‘Slings and Arrows’. McKellar has even covered the musical genre with his co-written play ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ which won him a Tony Award, touring Toronto, London and New York and currently has plans to create another musical.