10 THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT CHARLES SHAUGHNESSY
LONDON native Charles Shaughnessy’s TV career has seen him bounce from daytime to prime time and back again. His initial stretch on Days of Our Lives was followed by a six-season stint as stuffy Maxwell Sheffield opposite Fran Drescher on The Nanny. But since the CBS sitcom wrapped in 1999, he’s been a steady presence on the small screen — and even lent his voice to cartoons and video games. Having also briefly appeared on General Hospital in the ’80s, Charles returned to the soap last year to assume the role of evil Victor Cassadine. Here are ten things you don’t know about the 67-year-old star.
1 He was born into a showbiz family. Dad Alfred Shaughnessy was a writer for the British TV drama Upstairs, Downstairs, and mom Jean Lodge was a stage, film and television actress.
2 He studied law at the University of Cambridge, but after graduation, he enrolled in drama school.
3 He’s been married to actress Susan Fallender since 1983 — the year she made her feature film debut in Trading Places.
4 In 1986, he appeared with Betty White and Bert Convy on Super Password.
5 He won Celebrity Jeopardy! in 1995 but jokes, “I’m not quite as smart as I think I am. That’s what my wife would say.”
6 He became 5th Baron Shaughnessy in 2007, having inherited the title from his second cousin Michael, who died without a son.
7 He reunited onscreen with Drescher in 2011 during the first season of her TV Land sitcom, Happily Divorced.
8 He replaced Judge Reinhold as the lead in a stage production of Harvey at the New Theatre in Overland Park, Kan.
9 During the COVID-19 lockdown, he hosted the Facebook Live show Conversations in the Time of Quarantine.
10 He prefers playing villains because he thinks they’re “more fun.”