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 such as Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin, Blindness, and No Other Choice. 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.
Early life and education
Don McKellar was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 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.
Career
McKellar was a founding member of Toronto's Augusta Company, 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".
Alongside fellow showrunner Park Chan-wook, McKellar was expelled from the Writers Guild of America in August 2025 for strikebreaking. Park and McKellar had crossed WGA picket lines by continuing to write for their HBO miniseries The Sympathizer during the 2023 writer's strike.
Personal life
McKellar married his longtime partner, Canadian actress Tracy Wright, on January 3, 2010. Wright died of cancer on June 22, 2010.