Don McKellar

Don McKellar (born August 17, 1963) is a Canadian actor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.

He is known for directing and writing the film Last Night, which won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, as well as his screenplays for films like Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin, and Blindness. McKellar frequently acts in his own projects, and has also appeared in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and Crimes of the Future.

He is also known for being a fixture on Canadian television, with series including Twitch City, Odd Job Jack, and Slings & Arrows, as well as writing the book for the popular Tony Award-winning musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He is an eight-time nominee and two-time Genie Award winner.

Personal life
McKellar was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Marjorie Kay (Stirrett), a teacher, and John Duncan McKellar, a corporate lawyer. He attended Glenview Senior Public School, Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute and later studied English at the University of Toronto's Victoria College.

McKellar married his longtime partner, Canadian actress Tracy Wright, on January 3, 2010. Wright died of cancer on June 22, 2010.

Career
McKellar was a founding member of Toronto's Augusta Company, along with his future wife Tracy Wright and Daniel Brooks.

McKellar made his first screen appearance in 1989 in Bruce McDonald's film Roadkill, for which he also wrote the screenplay, earning Genie Award nominations for best supporting actor and best screenwriter, attracting the attention of many in Canada. Roadkill also won the Toronto-Citytv Award for best Canadian feature. McKellar collaborated again with McDonald for his 1991 film Highway 61, writing the screenplay and starring as the barber Pokey Jones. McKellar's work again solicited wide praise, earning him a second Genie nomination for best screenwriter and a nomination for best actor. McKellar and McDonald also spawned the cult classic television series Twitch City, in which McKellar starred as Curtis, a television addict and shut-in.

Since his entry into Canadian cinema, McKellar has been involved in numerous projects. He appeared in Atom Egoyan's films The Adjuster (1991) and Exotica (1994), the latter of which earned him the Genie for best supporting actor. McKellar collaborated with François Girard, authoring the screenplays for his films Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1992) and the Academy Award winning (Best Original Score) The Red Violin (1998), in which McKellar starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson. He also appeared alongside Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh in David Cronenberg's 1999 film eXistenZ. In 2008, he wrote and co-starred in the screen adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 novel Blindness.

McKellar is also a filmmaker in his own right; his directorial debut, Last Night (1998), which he also wrote and starred in, garnered impressive critical acclaim, winning the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival and the Claude Jutra Award at the Genies. His second film, Childstar, opened in 2004 at the Toronto International Film Festival to enthusiastic reviews.

On television, McKellar played Oliver Tapscrew in the 2001 TV children's drama series I Was a Rat. He also starred for four seasons in the The Comedy Network animated sitcom Odd Job Jack (2004–2007) as the titular hero Jack Ryder. In 2006, he appeared in Ken Finkleman's miniseries At the Hotel, received a Gemini Award nomination for his role as socialist politician Clarence Fines in Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story and hosted the CBC Radio One series High Definition.

McKellar appeared in all three seasons of television's Slings & Arrows as theatre director Darren Nichols. The show is co-written by Bob Martin, his collaborator on the musical The Drowsy Chaperone, for which McKellar won the 2006 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical. Martin and McKellar also cocreated the Canadian television sitcom Michael, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which debuted on CBC Television in fall 2011.

In 2016, McKellar was made a Member of the Order of Canada "for his contributions to Canadian culture as an actor, writer and director".