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Charles Lawson

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Charles Lawson
Born
Quintin Charles Devenish Lawson

(1959-09-17) 17 September 1959 (age 65)
Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland
NationalityNorthern Irish
OccupationActor
Years active1981–present
TelevisionJim 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

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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]

Career

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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.

Filmography

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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

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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.

Notes

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  1. ^ The Campbell College Register 1894–1999. Belfast: Campbell College. 1999. pp. 1–568.
  2. ^ Little, Ivan (18 November 2014). "Corrie actor Charlie Lawson: I probably did hate Catholics". Belfast Telegraph. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  3. ^ Charles Lawson (Jim McDonald) to return to Coronation Street Archived 9 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "Coronation Street legend speaks of wife's 'horrible' death". 5 June 2019.
  5. ^ "Corrie actor Charlie Lawson: I probably did hate Catholics" Belfast Telegraph 19 November 2014 Retrieved 25 October 2019
  6. ^ "Coronation Street hardman Lawson was fascinated by Loyalist gangs" Belfast Telegraph 26 October 2008 Retrieved 2 September 2012
  7. ^ "Charles Lawson: 'Exhausted' actor had mini-stroke on stage". BBC News. 30 October 2018. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
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