Toronto native Eric McCormack brings his show, The Concert I Never Gave, featuring songs and stories from his Scarborough upbringing to his mega-stardom as Will from hit TV series Will & Grace, to the Winter Garden Theatre on Jan. 23. Funds raised will benefit local charity Rethink Breast Cancer.

So what can we expect from your show at the Winter Garden Theatre this month?
Well, up-close-and-personal, intimate, revealing and funny, and it’s basically that little part of every actor that says, “I gotta tell you who I really am.” As much as I was heading for acting as early as first grade, by the time I was 13, it was so ingrained that it was like, “So now what could I fantasize about?” What I fantasized about was being a rock star, and this is one night I get to be a rock star.

What kind of music are we talking about?
A lot of them B sides, a lot of album tunes where people would know the artists Elton John or Billy Joel, but they don’t know that song. These are my tunes. And I tell a lot of funny stories and who I was and how I got that crazy kid to hang with his heroes because of this crazy sitcom.

What made you want to do this?
Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities to sing at charity events, like Gilda’s Club. They’d call me up and say, “Well, do whatever you want.” And I’m like, “Whatever I want! Well I’ll do a Burton Cummings song or a Tom Jones song.” Whatever it was, I got to cross something off my musical bucket list. And some of them would stick with me. These songs sort of piled up until I finally had a concert in my head that was made up of tunes I’d been doing one way or another since my [childhhod] bedroom. 

So what kind of music were you listening to as a teenager in Scarborough?
Put it this way, when everyone else was discovering punk and new wave, I was firmly entrenched in my Queen, Elton John, Rush.… I was drawn to great tunes but also to the theatrical. I was the kid that would dress up like Alice Cooper. And when my dad or mom would call me for dinner, I may get out of costume, I may not. They were like, “You’re 15 years old, now stop this!”

This is a benefit for Rethink Breast Cancer. How has cancer impacted you, personally?
It has impacted me tremendously as both of my parents are gone — my mother had breast cancer in the ’80s and beat it but succumbed to bladder cancer nine years ago, and my father two years later to prostate cancer, and my father-in-law died from brain cancer about five years ago. So it’s insidious and horrible, and there’s so many different great organizations fighting it in different ways, I vowed that whenever I do the show — this is only the third time — I would raise money for a cancer benefit.

What’s your fondest memory from Will & Grace?
It sounds like a very general answer, but it was the process. We lived exclusively on one stage because we were a sitcom. That stage is where we rehearsed as a small group on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday the network would show up, on Monday the crew and by Tuesday an audience of people who had tickets for six months — just the buildup and payoff of every Tuesday night being like an opening night.

Any New Year’s resolutions?
Work more. I’m resolved to do it.