I’m glad you asked.

 

An American Army Brat conceived in Scotland, born in Germany, a soccer fanatic, a Van Morrison disciple, a Zen-Catholic, the youngest of three brothers, son to a retired two-star general and a Scottish school teacher/painter, a writer, an actor, a director, a producer, a musician, an athlete, a husband, a father...oh, let’s just start from my twenty-second year.

 

After graduating cum laude from Seattle University in 1988 with a degree in Psychology and English, I worked several years as a counselor for abused adolescents in a residential treatment home, all the while publishing poetry and fiction and acting in amateur theatrical productions.

 

Buoyed by a small role in the film “The Chocolate War”, I decided to to take the full “artistic-leap” and in 1991 at the tender age of 24, I moved to New York City.  I was on Broadway at the Lincoln Center in the hit play “Six Degrees of Separation” within a month.   For the next three years I was a professional actor.    All the while I continued to write, playwrighting my medium of choice at the time.

 

My pursuits eventually led me to Los Angeles and after a couple movie roles and some less than inspiring television work, things began to turn sour.  As they often do in Los Angeles.  

 

In late 1993, broke and broken, I scampered north and set up camp on my brother’s couch in San Francisco.  For a year I dug in and tried to get my bearings, working at a law firm by day and a blues club by night.  All the while I continued to write and make theatre, starting a theatre company called “Little Brother Sam”.  We quickly became the “Pinter aficionados” of San Francisco.  

 

And then, in 1994, everything changed.

 

I wrote and performed my original solo-show “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights” in the loft of a Scottish pub called The Edinburgh Castle.  The story was inspired by the Van Morrison song of the same name, a song that had haunted me since the day I first heard it, some twelve years earlier.  The story reflected my life perfectly at the time - as art always does - and a six-month run ensued.  The city took notice.  The Bay Guardian proclaimed the show, “Hilarious and provocative, Mitchell is one of SF's best new talents.”  Dramalogue  said, “Mitchell is all raw energy, nerve ends exposed.”

 

And then in 1995 LA came calling again.

 

I decided to “temporarily” move south to perform in a play written for me by a friend.  But as fate would have it, an agency noticed my performance and snapped me up.  I strapped in and tried my hand at Hollywood once again.

 

In the Autumn of 1996 I decided to resurrect “Linden Arden”.  I produced it myself in a tiny West Hollywood 25-seat theatre.  And lo and behold it was a huge critical success:  “A testament to the capacities of storytelling.”  - LA Weekly Pick of the Week.  “Mesmerizing.”  - LA Times Critics Choice.  “A masterpiece.” - Backstage West Critics Choice.  

But this was LA and the only thing people could see in my performance was “a great movie”.  I was encouraged to adapt the piece into a screenplay.   Reluctantly I did.  

 

It was my first screenplay.  

 

The reaction was profound and instantaneous.  It launched my career as a professional writer and in the last thirteen years I have written for a dozen production companies, won awards and fellowships, sold screenplays, written comic books for Marvel, adapted several of my own plays into screenplays, had one feature produced and sold to a distributor, written directed two short films of my own, written a novel and more.   And the pace has yet to slacken.

 

Now daddy to my son Maxwell Henderson Mitchell;  I live exclusively in Los Angeles and continue to write, direct, act and teach in both cinema and theatre.  

And, folks, I’m just getting started.

 

Relentlessly yours,

Colin Mitchell