Other film roles have included Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Threesome, Pie in the Sky, Muppets from Space, S.W.A.T, Four Brothers, After.Life, Crossing the Bridge and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Also in 2011, Charles narrated the debut episode for NFL Network's A Football Life on New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.

In 2004, he appeared on stage in New York in a revival of Neil LaBute's The Distance from Here, which received a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble Cast.

In January 2006, he appeared in the world premiere of Richard Greenberg's The Well-Appointed Room for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, and he followed this with a run at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, portraying the cloned brothers in Caryl Churchill's A Number.

[16] He made his Broadway debut in Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee at the Hayes Theater in 2018.

[22] Charles was born, raised and educated in Baltimore, he got his first big acting break in a John Waters film, and his family still lives in the city.

[26][27][28] In August 2014, he signed an open letter from members of the Hollywood community condemning Hamas rocket attacks on Israel during the 2014 Gaza War.