Charles Shaughnessy

Charles George Patrick Shaughnessy, 5th Baron Shaughnessy, was born on 9 February 1955 in London, England. His father, Alfred Shaughnessy, was a television writer best known as the scriptwriter for Upstairs, Downstairs, and his mother was actress Jean Lodge. His brother, David Shaughnessy, pursued careers as an actor, television producer, and director. His great-grandfather, Thomas Shaughnessy, the 1st Baron Shaughnessy, was an American-Canadian railway administrator, and Charles inherited his baronial title upon the death of his second cousin Michael, the 4th Baron Shaughnessy, in 2007.

Shaughnessy began performing in plays during primary school. He attended Eton College before reading for a law degree at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis on the House of Lords and joined the Footlights club. After graduating, he chose to return to acting, enrolling in a London drama school and subsequently touring with a repertory company. He relocated to the United States and married actress Susan Fallender in 1983; the couple have two daughters, Jenny, born in 1990, and Maddy, born in 1995.

His American television career began with the role of Shane Donovan on the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives, a part he held from 1984 to 1992. The romantic pairing of his character with Patsy Pease's Kimberly Brady became a recognized soap supercouple and drew a renewed teenage audience to the series during the 1980s. He received Soap Opera Digest Awards for Outstanding New Actor in a Daytime Serial in 1985, for Favorite Daytime Super Couple in 1986, and for Outstanding Super Couple in 1988, the latter two shared with Pease. He returned to the role in May 2010 for a storyline connected to the funeral of Alice Horton, briefly reuniting with Pease, and again in May 2012 for a limited arc involving Shane's return to the ISA. A further three-episode return followed in November 2013, in which Shane and Kimberly address their daughter's drug use.

From 1993 to 1999, Shaughnessy portrayed Maxwell Sheffield opposite Fran Drescher on the CBS sitcom The Nanny. He subsequently appeared in a recurring capacity on Drescher's follow-up series, Living with Fran, playing her ex-husband Ted; that series was cancelled on 17 May 2006 after two seasons. He made a guest appearance on the first-season finale of Drescher's TV Land sitcom Happily Divorced, which first aired on 17 August 2011, and reunited with her on 6 December 2010 for her limited-run daytime program, The Fran Drescher Show.

Shaughnessy voiced Dennis the Goldfish on the Disney Channel animated series Stanley, a role for which he won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program on 11 May 2002. His other voice work includes Dr. Quintaine in the PC game Freelancer, Pietro in the 2008 animated film The Tale of Despereaux, and the Cockney English accent for the Boss character in the video game Saints Row 2. His television appearances span a wide range of projects, including an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, a guest role as Alec Colson in the Stargate SG-1 episode Covenant, a guest appearance in The Mentalist episode Miss Red on 5 May 2009, and a recurring role as Christopher Plover on The Magicians. He also held a recurring role as St. John Powell on Mad Men and became a series regular on General Hospital, playing the villain Victor Cassadine.

On Broadway, Shaughnessy appeared in Urinetown in 2001. His stage work has extended to regional theater, including the role of King Arthur in Monty Python's Spamalot at The Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine, in August and September 2010, for which he received the Broadway World Boston Theater Award for Best Lead Actor in a Musical in January 2011. In June 2011, he played Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts, and returned to that venue in fall 2013 to play Georges in La Cage aux Folles. In January 2014, he assumed the lead role in Harvey at the New Theatre in Overland Park, Kansas.

Since 2010, Shaughnessy has starred as Elliot Sanders in the soap opera web series The Bay. Along with his brother David Shaughnessy and Ophelia Soumekh, he is a partner in 3S Media Solutions Inc.