Josh Charles

Joshua Aaron Charles (born September 15, 1971) is an American film, television, and theater actor. 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. Early life Charles is the son of Allan Charles, an advertising executive. He is Jewish on his father's side and has described himself as Jewish. He began his career performing comedy at the age of nine. 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 Charles' 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, S.W.A.T, Four Brothers, After.Life, Crossing the Bridge and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. 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 ABC and earned Charles a Screen Actors Guild nomination. In 2008, Charles played the role of Jake in season one of HBO's In Treatment. In 2009, he returned to network television in the CBS drama The Good Wife. For 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.