Born in Liverpool, Walmsley came to Canada with his family in 1952, and was raised in Oshawa, Ontario, and Lorraine, Quebec. He dropped out of high school and battled addictions as a young adult.
In addition to his plays, Walmsley was the winner of the first Three-Day Novel Contest in 1979 for his novel Doctor Tin. He later published a sequel, Shades, and another unrelated novel, Kid Stuff. Walmsley wrote the screenplay for Jerry Ciccoritti's film Paris, France in 1993. Ciccoritti also later adapted Walmsley's play Blood into a film.
Walmsley's style of writing ranges from the naturalistic to the poetic and, at times, the absurd. He moves easily between dramatic and comedic, and some of his "darkest" work is treated with a cutting sense of humour. His most common themes include sex (both hetero- and homosexual, often involving sado-masochistic fetishes, adulterous affairs, and, in the case of Blood, incest), violence, addiction (to alcohol and heroin in particular), and God (from a Christian perspective). He rarely deals with politics directly, although he openly displays a distaste for middle-class morality and social conservative interpretations of Christianity.

Return to Tom Walmsley Autograph Profile