Charlie Day

Charles Peckham Day was born in New York City on February 9, 1976. His family lived in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. He spent most of his childhood in Middletown, Rhode Island. He is the younger of two children, with an elder sister named Alice. His father, Dr. Thomas Charles Day, who is of Italian and Irish descent, is a retired professor of music history at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island and his mother, Mary (née Peckham), was a music teacher at The Pennfield School (formerly The New School) in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and of English descent. His paternal grandfather changed the family name from Del Giorno to Day to assimilate during WWII; he died in a military training accident when his son Thomas was only four.

Day attended Pennfield School and graduated from the Portsmouth Abbey School, both in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He attended Merrimack College, where he majored in art history and was active in the Onstagers, Merrimack's student theater organization. He graduated in 1998. In May 2014, he gave the commencement speech for Merrimack's graduating class and received an honorary Ph.D.While still in college, Day was active in the training programs at the Williamstown Theatre Festival every summer from 1997, where he was a contemporary of actors such as Jimmi Simpson, David Hornsby, Kathryn Hahn, Justin Long and Sterling K. Brown. Day went on to play the lead role in Dead End, at the Huntington Theatre in Boston.

After graduating, Day worked on small television roles, advertisements, and voiceovers for the Independent Film Channel, and supplemented his income by waiting tables and answering phones for a telethon. In the early 2000s, he had guest and recurring appearances on television shows such as Law & Order, Third Watch, Reno 911! and the short-lived sitcom Luis.