Tilly was educated in
Wellington, taking art at Wellington Technical College in the early 1950s. He then attended
teachers' colleges in Wellington and
Dunedin, specialising in arts and crafts teaching. He was awarded an overseas bursary and studied children's drama in England during the early 1960s, learning from the best, Peter Slade and Brian Way. On his return to New Zealand he tutored drama with
Nola Millar and later became a senior acting tutor at New Zealand Drama School. In 1976, Tilly co-founded Wellington's
Circa Theatre, where he acted in a number of plays written by playwright
Roger Hall, one of New Zealand's most successful playwrights. He designed the set for Hall's breakthrough hit, the public service satire
Glide Time. Tilly is known for his acting role in the follow-up
Middle Age Spread and solo rugby play ''
C'mon Black,'' that playwright Roger Hall wrote with Tilly in mind. Tilly designed the theatre space of Circa Theatre for the original location in a building in Harris St, and worked with the architects designing the theatre space the new and much larger building that opened in 1994. Aside from a busy stage career, Tilly acted often for the screen. He made his television debut in the 1967 one-off comedy
The Tired Man then ad-libbed alongside playwright
Joseph Musaphia on the children's show ''
Joe's World''. Tilly's biggest screen roles include that of a headmaster who has an affair in 1979's film adaptation of
Middle Age Spread (showbusiness magazine
Variety compared him to "an antipodean Woody Allen") and in the 1982 comedy
Carry Me Back, as the farmer who must sneak his father's body back home after he unexpectedly dies. Both movies were directed by Tilly's Circa Theatre colleague, John Reid. Grant Tilly's is the voice in the Oscar-nominated animated Western short
The Frog, the Dog and the Devil. His television credits include an award-winning performance as artist
Toss Woollaston in the teleplay
Erua, Reverend Henry Williams in the historical epic
The Governor, the
Margaret Mahy fantasy
Cuckoo Land (1995), and a starring role in 2009 short
Roof Rattling. Tilly also had many smaller parts in feature films, including two adventures shot partly or wholly in New Zealand: he was "The Collector" in the chase movie
Race for the Yankee Zephyr, and a villainous Imperial German, "Count Heinrich von Rittenberg", in
Savage Islands (also known as
Nate and Hayes). His "Drawing on History" articles focused on the changing face of Wellington's urban landscape. In the
1988 New Year Honours, Tilly was appointed a
Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to the theatre. In 2002, Tilly donated his skill to design a flexible 90-seat performance space for Stagecraft Theatre (a non-professional theatre company in Wellington). The
Ngā Whakarākei O Whātaitai / Wellington Theatre Awards annually an award called The Grant Tilly Actor of the Year. ==Death==