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.
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.
As a teenager, he spent several summers at Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center in New York, and attended the Baltimore School for the Arts.
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.