Colin McPhillamy was born in London to Australian parents and now lives in New York. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His first job as a professional actor was at the remote, but well known, Little Theatre on the Isle of Mull where he performed a solo version of Henry V playing some 40,000 parts including both the French and English armies.He wrote an account of this experience and it was broadcast on BBC Radio, receiving great press and a large mailbag from the public. He continued writing plays and short stories during the 1990s and published a volume of this work in 1999 as The Tree House and other Stories (second edition 2010).McPhillamy's second book, An Actor Walk into China, tells of his experiences playing Kent in King Lear in Beijing, and of the Shakespeare scene in China, he also describes producing a season of Chinese theater in London and some of the cultural confusion that went on.