Loading AI tools
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.
Charles Lawson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Quintin Charles Devenish Lawson 17 September 1959 Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland |
| Nationality | Northern Irish |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Television | Jim McDonald in Coronation Street |
Lawson was born in 1959[1] 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.[2]
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!").[citation needed]
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.[3] 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.
- 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 |
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.[4] 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.[5] In a 2008 programme, he admitted to supporting the actions of loyalist paramilitaries during the Ulster Workers' strike in 1974.[6]
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".[7] He was subsequently replaced in the role by Ron Donachie.
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
