Background
Charles was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Laura (née Heckscher), a gossip columnist for The Baltimore Sun newspaper, and Allan Charles, an advertising executive.
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Josh Charles
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As a teenager, he spent several summers at Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center in New York, and attended the Baltimore School for the Arts.
Career
He began his career performing comedy at the age of nine. Charles dropped out of high school, never receiving a diploma. Charles"s film debut was in fellow Baltimore native John Waters" Hairspray in 1988.
The following year, he starred alongside Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke in the Oscar-winning Dead Poets Society.
Subsequent film roles have included Don"t Tell Mom the Babysitter"s Dead, Threesome, Pie in the Sky, Muppets from Space, South.W.A.T, Four Brothers, After.Life, Crossing the Bridge, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. In 2008, Charles played the role of Jake in Season 1 of Home Box Office"s In Treatment.
In 2009, he returned to network television in the Columbia Broadcasting System drama The Good Wife. In 1986, Charles headlined a production of Jonathan Marc Sherman"s Confrontation.
In January 2006 he appeared in the world premiere of Richard Greenberg"s The Well-Appointed Room for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, and followed this with a run at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, portraying the cloned brothers in Caryl Churchill"s A Number.
In 2007, he appeared in Adam Bock"s The Receptionist at the Manhattan Theatre Club. In 2011, Charles was the narrator for NFL Network"s A Football Life"s debut episode on New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.
Achievements
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He is best known for the roles of Dan Rydell on Sports Night, Will Gardner on The Good Wife, which earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and his early work as Knox Overstreet in Dead Poets Society. On television, Charles played sports anchor Dan Rydell in Aaron Sorkin"s Emmy Award-winning Sports Night, which ran for two years (1998–2000) on American Broadcasting Company and earned Charles a Screen Actors Guild nomination. Foreign his work on the series he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2011 and 2014. In 2004, he appeared on stage in New York in a revival of Neil LaBute"s The Distance From Here, which received a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble Cast.
