American actor Colin Egglesfield was born on February 9, 1973 in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Growing up in Detroit, and later at Crete, Illinois, he dreamed of becoming a physician like his father. However, after seeing his older sister perform on stage, he took an interest in acting. He took his pre-med degree at the University of Iowa, and turned to modeling to earn money for his stay in medical school. Turning his back on medicine completely, he then signed with a modeling agency in Italy and posed for several fashion lines, including Versace and Armani.
It was only later when Egglesfield turned to acting. After taking some lessons, he started playing guest roles on television shows, appearing in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Gilmore Girls, Nip/Tuck and Charmed, among others. He also played small roles in films such as S.W.A.T., Beautiful Dreamer and Must Love Dogs. He got his biggest break in 2005, when he joined the cast of the daytime soap All My Children. He took on a role that was originated six months earlier by Scott Kinworthy—Josh Madden, a somewhat controversial character due to the nature of his origins.
Egglesfield’s character was at the center of a controversial storyline in the soap during the 1970s, when Erika Kane (Susan Lucci) had an abortion—the first abortion on television since the Roe v. Wade decision—to be able to keep her acting career. The baby was presumed dead for thirty years, until All My Children’s head writer Megan McTavish decided that no abortion was actually done, and the baby was alive after all. A doctor (Ian Buchanan) took the embryo and implanted it to his wife; the embryo would soon become Josh. The adult character tries to deal with his actual origins, and meeting his biological parents.
In 2009, he was cast as Auggie Kirkpatrick in the reboot of the 90s teen series Melrose Place.