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Christopher Lawford

Christopher Lawford built a screen career around supporting roles, moving comfortably between daytime television, prime-time series and feature films. Born in Santa Monica on March 29, 1955, he was the son of actor and Rat Pack member Peter Lawford. Acting, however, was not his first professional plan. He graduated from Tufts University in 1977, earned a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1983 and eventually decided that a legal career was not for him. After appearing in Boston commercials for two years, Lawford moved to Southern California in 1988 to pursue acting. His most sustained television role came as Philip “Charlie” Brent Jr. on All My Children from 1992 to 1995. He later had a brief run on General Hospital and appeared in series including Frasier and The O.C. His film work was similarly varied. Lawford took small roles in The Russia House and Oliver Stone’s The Doors, appeared in the independent comedy Kiss Me Guido and played Navy officer William Ecker in Thirteen Days, the 2000 drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Further credits included Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the Anthony Hopkins motorcycle drama The World’s Fastest Indian. Across more than two decades in film and television, he became a familiar supporting presence rather than a conventional leading man. Lawford’s public life ultimately extended well beyond acting and producing. After entering rehabilitation in 1986, he remained sober until his death in 2018 and spent two decades speaking about addiction and recovery. He wrote several books on those subjects, beginning with the 2005 memoir Symptoms of Withdrawal, and also addressed his experience with hepatitis C in Healing Hepatitis C. His advocacy included work with the World Health Organization, the United Nations and other public-health organizations. That combination of screen work, writing and recovery activism gave Lawford a career with two distinct but connected sides: telling stories as an actor and using his own story to help change how addiction was discussed.