Educated in St. John's, he was an honours student before quitting after Grade 10 to pursue an acting career in Toronto.
After briefly working on a children's touring theatre show, he landed his first television role in the drama series Police Surgeon.
Sexton and colleague Diane Olsen subsequently wrote Cod on a Stick, a comedic play which launched CODCO.
[3] After CODCO's run concluded in 1993, Sexton and Malone wrote and starred in a CBC television special, The National Doubt, satirizing the constitutional debates of the early 1990s.
[6] The Tommy Sexton Centre, a new assisted housing complex for people living with HIV and AIDS, was opened in St. John's in 2006.