Josh Charles

Joshua Aaron Charles is a Golden Globe- and two-time Emmy Award-nominated actor who was born on September 15, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland. He is known for his TV roles as Will Gardner on The Good Wife and as Dan Rydell on Sports Night.

As a child, Charles attended the Baltimore School for the Arts and spent several summers at Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center in New York. He made his film debut after securing the role of Iggy in Hairspray in 1988, and he had his big break the following year, when he starred as Knox Overstreet opposite the late Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke in the Academy Award-winning hit Dead Poets Society. This led to Charles becoming a Hollywood regular during the 1990s with appearances in films such as Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991), Threesome (1994), Pie in the Sky (1996), and Muppets from Space (1999).

Charles's television career also skyrocketed in the late '90s after he was cast as Dan Rydell on Sports Night on ABC, appearing in a total of 45 episodes from 1998 to 2000. He also added a number of film credits to his résumé in the early 2000s, including the role of T.J. McCabe in S.W.A.T. (2003) and the role of Detective Fowler in Four Brothers (2005). In 2008, he starred as Jake in the HBO series In Treatment and was then cast as Will Gardner on the popular CBS drama series The Good Wife. Between 2009 and 2016, he appeared in a total of 108 episodes and earned an Emmy Award nomination in 2011, alongside a Golden Globe nomination and a second Emmy Award nomination in 2014.

His other notable recent screen credits include Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (2015), Masters of Sex (2015), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2016-17), Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later (2017) and Law & Order: True Crime (2017).

On stage, Charles headlined a production of Confrontation by Joanathan Marc Sherman in 1986, but it wasn't until 2004 when he made his New York stage debut in MCC Theater's revival of Neil LaBute's The Distance From Here at The Duke on 42nd Street, winning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance along with his cast. He then appeared in Steppenwolf Theatre Company's world premiere of The Well-Appointed Room by Richard Greenberg in Chicago and in Caryl Churchill's A Number at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco before returning off Broadway to star in Manhattan Theatre Club's The Receptionist by Adam Bock at New York City Center in 2007. He appeared on the New York stage in Signature Theatre's 2017 production of The Antipodes at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Second Stage Theater's Broadway premiere of Straight White Men at the Hayes Theater, from June 30 until September 9, 2018, marked Charles's Broadway debut.