Charles Lawson

This article is about the actor. For the Scottish nurseryman, see Charles Lawson (nurseryman). For the criminal, see Charlie Lawson.

Charles Lawson
Born	Quintin Charles Devenish Lawson (1959-09-17) 17 September 1959 Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Northern Irish
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1981–present
Television	Jim McDonald in Coronation Street

Quintin Charles Devenish Lawson (born 17 September 1959) is an actor from Northern Ireland who is best known for playing Jim McDonald on the long running ITV soap opera Coronation Street.

Early life and education

Lawson was born in 1959 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, the son of a businessman. Raised in a Protestant family, he was educated at Campbell College, a grammar school in Belfast. He then trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where a classmate and good friend of his was fellow Enniskillen native Adrian Dunbar, whom Lawson has said was the first Catholic he had ever met.

Career

Lawson has appeared in three films and in at least twenty television productions. He was Jim McDonald (who is originally from Belfast) in the ITV television soap opera Coronation Street. He first appeared as Jim in 1989 and remained a regular character for the next 11 years, with sporadic appearances since then.

His other television work includes appearing as Seamus Duffryn in the 1982 Yorkshire Television thriller miniseries Harry's Game (also known as Belfast Assassin), and as one of the main characters, Billy, in Mike Leigh's television film Four Days in July, both based on The Troubles in Northern Ireland. He played Trigg in the 1989 television film The Firm. He has also appeared in various other television series including Doctors (twenty-four episodes), Bread (eleven episodes), The Bill (three episodes) and Rosemary & Thyme (one episode).

In 2000, Lawson made a programme for ITV Granada, Passion for Peace, which followed him back to Northern Ireland and reported on the creation of the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Centre in Warrington.

In 2005, Lawson appeared in the TV documentary Titanic: Birth of a Legend.

In 2009, Lawson appeared alongside an eight-foot Frankfurter sausage in a German television commercial, advertising hot dogs. His overdubbed catchphrase in the commercial is Betrachten Sie die Größe meiner Wurst! (English: "Look at the size of my sausage!").

In 2010, Lawson revealed that he would be returning to Coronation Street for its fiftieth anniversary celebrations. He speculated that bosses may be planning to kill his character off, however, this never happened. He stayed until April 2011. Lawson then returned for a three-month stint on the soap between August and November 2014. His brief return coincided with the imprisonment of Peter Barlow (Chris Gascoyne) after he was wrongly accused of murdering Tina McIntyre.

In 2015, Lawson made a guest appearance in an episode of the Comedy Central sitcom Brotherhood as the father of the three main characters. He also appeared as Doctor Black in the 2016 BBC drama My Mother and Other Strangers.

Lawson returned to Coronation Street in September 2018 with his supposed deceased daughter from his relationship with Liz.

Filmography

Television

Year	Title	Role	Note(s)
1982	Harry's Game	Seamus Duffryn	3 Episodes
1982	Joyce in June	Dossie Wright/Maxwell Cox	Television film
1983	Crown Court	Sandy Watson	1 Episode
1984	Four Days in July	Billy	Television film
1985	Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil	S.S. Man	Television film
1985	Up the Elephant and Round the Castle	Military Police Corporal	1 episode
1986	Boon	Niall Mahoney	1 episode
1986	The Monocled Mutineer	Featured	Miniseries; 1 episode
1986-1989	Bread	Yizzel	11 Episodes
1987	Up Line	Tommy Burns	Miniseries; 3 episodes
1989	Screen Two	Cranham	1 episode
1989, 2002	The Bill	D.S. Picton/ Alan McCourt	3 episodes; 1 as Picton and 2 as McCourt
1989–2000, 2003–2005, 2007–2011, 2014, 2018	Coronation Street	Jim McDonald	1168 episodes
1989	The Firm	Trigg	Television Film
1990	4 Play	Joseph	1 episode
2003	In Deep	Mike Marshall	2 episodes
2003	Holby City	Brian Taylor	2 episodes
2003-2012	Doctors	Gary Davies/ Bill McQueen	25 episodes
2004	Dalziel and Pascoe	Charles Stubbs	2 episodes
2005	Titanic: Birth of a Legend	Alexander Carlisle	Television film
2006	Rosemary & Thyme	Bingham	1 episode
2006	Casualty	Stan Drinkwater	1 episode
2015	Brotherhood	Aidan Barrett	1 episode
2016	My Mother and Other Strangers	Doctor Black	2 episodes
2018	Dark Heart	Father Connolly	2 episodes

Personal life

Lawson has been married three times, and has a daughter, Laura, from his first marriage to Suzie, which ended in divorce in 1994. His second marriage was to the makeup artist Lesley Bond, who died from hypothermia following a fall in 2010 sometime after they separated. He lives in Belfast with his third wife, Debbie Stanley, having previously lived with her in Chester, Cheshire, for a number of years.

Lawson is an Ulster Unionist. In a 2008 programme, he admitted to supporting the actions of loyalist paramilitaries during the Ulster Workers' strike in 1974.

On 8 October 2018, while portraying Inspector John Rebus in the play Rebus: Long Shadows in Edinburgh, Lawson suffered a minor stroke on stage, but recovered shortly afterwards. He claims the stroke left him with hearing and walking difficulties. He said, "I feel lucky to be alive, I was so scared I couldn't stop crying". He was subsequently replaced in the role by Ron Donachie.

External links

• Charles Lawson at IMDb