Gaius Charles Movies and Career Information

Gaius Charles (born May 2, 1983) is an American stage, television and film actor best known for playing Brian "Smash" Williams on NBC's Friday Night Lights. Charles was born on May 2, 1983 in Manhattan, New York, then lived in Queens, and later moved to Teaneck, New Jersey with his family when he was in middle school. Growing up in the childhood home of composer Alan Silvestri, he graduated from Teaneck High School in 2001. He attended Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama and performed in productions including Candide, The Wild Party and Spunk, the college's first production with an all-black cast. He appeared in Romeo and Juliet as Mercutio at Princeton's Shakespeare festival and also studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney, Australia. Charles had guest-starred in one episode of The Book of Daniel and one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and attended around 250 auditions before landing a main role on the ensemble cast of Friday Night Lights as Brian "Smash" Williams. The night before his Friday Night Lights audition, he sprained his ankle and wound up in a hospital