Biography
Charles Carroll was born Daniel Patrick Charles Carroll in Los Angeles, CA to a Catholic family with Irish and Scottish ancestry. He grew up in Manhattan Beach; he attended Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary and later Junipero Serra High School. He received academic scholarships from the State of California and the Copley Foundation, and studied Theatre at Loyola University, graduating in 1974. He gratefully accepted the opportunity to study abroad when actor Carroll O'Connor and Los Angeles attorney Charles Prince provided an acting scholarship to pursue his professional training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Returning to the U.S., he toured as Alexander Hamilton in a production of Jefferson vs. Hamilton, the story of the famous disagreements on the financial structure of our country, a play that he co-authored.
In 1979, he opened the Los Angeles Garden Theater Festival at the University of Southern California with the premiere of his own one-man show on the life of Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing; then toured the country in the production.
Charles has performed with regional theaters and Shakespeare companies across the country including the North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts; Stage West and Shakespeare in the Park in Fort Worth; the Dallas Theatre Center, Stage #1, Theatre Three, and Shakespeare Festival Dallas in Texas; Shakespeare in the Park in Omaha, Nebraska; as well as the LA Shakespeare Festival and the Grove Shakespeare in California. He has had the pleasure of working with many acclaimed directors including Edward Payson Call, Richard Risso, and Maurice Daniels of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
While performing in the Shakespeare Festival in Dallas in 1986, he was cast in "Robocop," his first major motion picture.
In addition, Charles has taught acting at California State University Dominguez Hills, and Richland College in Richland, TX., and given acting seminars across the US, and at Concordia University in Montreal. He developed a curriculum of on camera acting classes at the Film Actors Lab in Las Colinas, Texas, where he taught with Adam Roarke and Spencer Milligan from 1987 to 1991. He was asked to join the faculties of K.D. Studios and S.T.A.G.E. in 1989 to include his method in their curriculum. He produced and directed four short films using his acting students, utilizing entirely student film crews from local university and professional schools. In 1991, he returned to Los Angeles, forming his own On Camera Workshop. In addition to coaching many up and coming young actors, his long-term students include several well-established professionals. He continues to act in film and television as well as theatre productions, as time permits.
