[1] Born in India in 1867 of Scots and English parents, McRae went to New Zealand at the age of sixteen where he worked in cattle ranching.

[citation needed] A year after arriving in the United States McRae made his first appearance on stage supporting Elsie de Wolfe and Forbes Robertson in Thermidor at Proctor's 23rd Street Theatre.

[1] The season of 1895–1896, he played in The Fatal Card by C. Haddon Chambers and the following year supported Olga Nethersole, playing the leading juvenile roles in Camille, Denise by Alexander Dumas, Frou-Frou by Henri Meilhac, The Wife of Scarli by Giuseppe Giacosa and The Daughter of France, after which came two years as leading man with Herbert Kelcey and Effie Shannon in A Coat of Many Colors and Clyde Fitch's The Moth and the Flame.

[1] For several years, 1903-1908 he worked as leading man to the young Ethel Barrymore, appearing with her in Carrots,[2] A Country Mouse by Arthur Law,[3] Cousin Kate by Hubert Henry Davies, Sunday by Thomas Raceward,[4] A Doll's House, Alice Sit-by-the-Fire by J. M. Barrie,[5] Captain Jinks by Clyde Fitch,[6] The Silver Box by John Galsworthy and His Excellency the Governor by Robert Marshall.

During this time he also participated in a number of special productions, such as the Miller-Anglin revival of Camille, the matinée of Paul Bertons's Yvette, The Embarrassment of Riches by Louis K. Anspacher at Wallack's and as leading man of the Bellows Stock Company at Elitch Gardens, Denver, for the sumner of 1906.

In the fall of that year, he left Ethel Barrymore and appeared first in The Step-sister by Charles Klein and then was engaged by Harrison Grey Fiske to support his wife, Minnie Maddern, in Ibsens's Rosmersholm.