Colin Mochrie

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Colin Andrew Mochrie is a Scottish-born Canadian actor and improvisational comedian, born November 30, 1957, in Kilmarnock, Scotland, who is the most continuously visible performer in the history of televised improv. He trained at Studio 58 at Langara College in Vancouver and was among the founding members of the Vancouver TheatreSports League before spending three years with The Second City Toronto. He subsequently appeared in every episode of the American Whose Line Is It Anyway?, hosted by Drew Carey on ABC and later the CW, and had already established himself as a regular on the British edition hosted by Clive Anderson on Channel 4. His improv partnership with Ryan Stiles is among the most celebrated in the history of performance improv. He tours with Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, a hybrid show co-created with hypnotist Asad Mecci.

Career

Colin Andrew Mochrie was born on November 30, 1957, in Kilmarnock, Scotland. His family moved to Montreal in 1964 and then to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1969. He attended Studio 58 at Langara College in Vancouver, a four-year professional theatre training program with an acting focus, graduating approximately in 1980. While the program's curriculum emphasized classical acting training rather than improv specifically, it provided the foundational ensemble and physical performance skills that Mochrie would develop further through TheatreSports.

Upon graduating from Studio 58, Mochrie was among the founding members of the Vancouver TheatreSports League, the organization established to present Keith Johnstone's Theatresports competitive format in British Columbia. He met Ryan Stiles during his years with the league and developed the improvisational partnership that would define both performers' subsequent television careers. He performed with the Vancouver TheatreSports League from approximately 1980 to the mid-1980s.

In 1986, Mochrie moved to Toronto and joined The Second City Toronto as a cast member. He spent approximately three years with the company, during which time he met fellow performer Debra McGrath, who had been with the company since 1983 and was serving in a directorial capacity; McGrath has also been credited with recruiting Mochrie into the company. The two married in 1989.

Mochrie first auditioned for the Channel 4 British Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1989 but was not selected. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 and auditioned again, this time successfully, joining the show's cast for its Channel 4 run. He became a regular on the British series, appearing through all remaining series until 1998, a tenure of approximately seven years. The British Whose Line cast during this period also included Ryan Stiles, Tony Slattery, Josie Lawrence, Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, and Wayne Brady.

On August 5, 1998, the American adaptation of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, hosted by Drew Carey, premiered on ABC. Mochrie and Ryan Stiles were permanent cast members from the beginning of the American run, with Wayne Brady joining as a permanent cast member from Season 2. Mochrie appeared in every episode of the American series across its original ABC run from 1998 to 2004, its ABC Family continuation from 2005 to 2007, and the CW revival beginning in 2013. His on-screen partnership with Stiles, characterized by physical comedy, wordplay, and a long-established comedic shorthand, became the defining performing relationship of the Whose Line format.

Mochrie co-wrote and co-produced Canadian sitcoms Getting Along Famously and She's the Mayor with his wife Debra McGrath. He received two Canadian Comedy Awards, a Gemini Award, a Writers Guild of Canada award, and was named Canadian Comedy Person of the Year in 2013.

In 2015, Mochrie developed and began touring Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, a hybrid performance show co-created with hypnotist Asad Mecci in which audience members are hypnotized and then incorporated as performers in improvised scenes. The show has sold out venues across North America and Europe and constitutes a sustained experiment in hybrid participatory performance that extends Mochrie's improv work into new performance territory. He continues to perform on the Whose Live Anyway? touring show alongside Greg Proops, Ryan Stiles, and Jeff B. Davis.

In 2017, Mochrie publicly revealed that his daughter Kinley is transgender, announcing her transition publicly with her permission and framing the news explicitly through improv's 'yes, and' principle. He has since become an active advocate for LGBTQ+ youth, supporting Rainbow Camp, an affirming summer camp for LGBTQ+ youth in Thessalon, Ontario.

Historical Context

Mochrie's career trajectory encapsulates the history of the North American improv establishment from the 1980s through the present more completely than almost any other single practitioner's record. His path from Vancouver TheatreSports through Second City Toronto and into both the British and American editions of Whose Line gave him firsthand experience of both the Johnstonian Theatresports tradition and the Chicago-derived Second City ensemble tradition before he became the face of televised improv for mass audiences on two continents.

The Vancouver TheatreSports League, where Mochrie began performing, was among the earliest North American organizations to present Johnstone's Theatresports format. His membership in its founding cohort gave him direct access to Johnstone's competitive improv model before the format had been widely disseminated. The contrast between the Theatresports competitive structure he learned in Vancouver and the ensemble performance approach of Second City Toronto, where he subsequently worked, gave Mochrie an unusual dual training in the two primary institutional traditions of North American improv during the 1980s.

His appearance in every episode of the American Whose Line Is It Anyway? across multiple decades of the show's broadcast history, combined with his earlier British run, makes him the single most visible performer in the recorded history of televised improv comedy. The longevity and consistency of this presence gave him a public profile within the format that no other performer has matched.

Teaching Philosophy

Mochrie has publicly articulated improv's 'yes, and' principle as a framework applicable not only to performance but to personal and family life, most visibly in his 2017 statement about his daughter Kinley's transition. He has credited Vancouver TheatreSports with giving him the improvisational foundation that his more formal theatrical training at Studio 58 did not provide, indicating that he values the ensemble and spontaneity practice of improv training over the technical skill-building of classical acting programs. He has emphasized that the absence of a script, the fundamental condition of improv performance, is what drove Whose Line's success with audiences.

Legacy

Mochrie's Whose Line career, spanning both the British and American editions of the format across more than two decades of broadcasting, constitutes the most sustained individual performance record in televised improv history. The American Whose Line Is It Anyway? under Drew Carey, in which Mochrie appeared in every episode, is widely credited with introducing improv comedy to mainstream American television audiences in a format they embraced, and with training a generation of comedy viewers to recognize and appreciate the short-form improv game vocabulary.

His 2017 public announcement of his daughter Kinley's transgender identity, explicitly framed through improv's foundational 'yes, and' principle, became one of the most widely circulated applications of improv philosophy to a personal context, introducing the concept to audiences who might never have encountered it in a theatrical or pedagogical setting. The statement extended the reach of improv's core principles into public discourse on gender identity and family acceptance in a way that no performing practitioner had previously achieved at comparable scale.

Hyprov, the hybrid hypnosis-improv performance format Mochrie co-developed from 2015, represents an ongoing attempt to extend the participatory and spontaneous dimensions of improv performance into new territory. The show's commercial success across North American and European touring circuits demonstrates that improv performance continues to generate viable live entertainment formats at the level of a performing career sustained over multiple decades.

Early Life and Training

Colin Mochrie was born on November 30, 1957, in Kilmarnock, Scotland. His family moved to Montreal in 1964 and then to Vancouver in 1969. He attended Studio 58 at Langara College in Vancouver, graduating with professional theatre training approximately in 1980. He served as his school's valedictorian.

Personal Life

Colin Mochrie married actress and comedian Debra McGrath in 1989; they met while both were performing at Second City Toronto in the late 1980s. They have one child, Kinley Mochrie, who came out as transgender in 2016. Mochrie announced Kinley's transition publicly in 2017 with her permission. He supports Rainbow Camp, an affirming summer camp for LGBTQ+ youth in Thessalon, Ontario.