CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Charles Shaughnessy

British actor (born 1955)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Charles George Patrick Shaughnessy, 5th Baron Shaughnessy is a British actor and hereditary peer. His roles on American television include Shane Donovan on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, Maxwell Sheffield on the sitcom The Nanny, and the voice of Dennis the Goldfish on Stanley for which he won a Daytime Emmy Award. He had recurring roles as Christopher Plover on The Magicians and St. John Powell on Mad Men. Shaughnessy was a series regular on ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital in the role of villain Victor Cassadine.

Editorial summary

“Charles Shaughnessy” enters the record as british actor (born 1955). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Shaughnessy and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current 90-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Charles, Shaughnessy and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Charles Shaughnessy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Charles, Shaughnessy and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles Shaughnessy”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Charles Shaughnessy primary sources, Charles Shaughnessy archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles Shaughnessy”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Charles Shaughnessy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.