Charles McHugh O’Donnell was born on July 11, 2003, in Los Angeles, California. The second son and third child of actor Chris O’Donnell and teacher Caroline Fentress, he made two separate guest appearances on NCIS: Los Angeles as a six-year-old in 2010, competed in junior golf tournaments as a teenager, performed on stage, and at 22 is living privately on the East Coast.
Table of Contents
| Full name | Charles McHugh O’Donnell |
| Born | July 11, 2003, Los Angeles, California |
| Age (March 2026) | 22 |
| Parents | Chris O’Donnell and Caroline Fentress |
| Siblings | Lily, Chip, Finley, Maeve |
| Birth order | Third of five children; second son |
| Known for | Two guest appearances, NCIS: Los Angeles, Season 1 (2010) |
| Current base | East Coast, USA |
Growing Up the Middle Child in a Five-Kid Household
Charlie O’Donnell grew up third in a line of five, in a custom-built home on a bluff in Pacific Palisades, west Los Angeles, with a father filming 14-hour days on a CBS set and a mother who taught primary school. No nanny. Chris and Caroline O’Donnell split all five children’s schedules between themselves.
Chris O’Donnell grew up the youngest of seven in Winnetka, Illinois, in a devout Catholic household of Irish and German descent. He has spoken in multiple interviews about building the same kind of family for himself once he had the means to do it. He met Caroline Fentress through her brother Andrew, his Boston College roommate, in the early 1990s. They married in April 1997 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Washington D.C.
Charlie’s four siblings:
- Lily Anne (born September 3, 1999) — studied film and cinema at Boston College; now works in TV distribution at Lionsgate in New York City
- Christopher “Chip” Eugene Jr. (born October 24, 2000)
- Finley (born March 24, 2006)
- Maeve Frances (born December 10, 2007)
Weekends in the O’Donnell household covered soccer, football, basketball, baseball, and riding lessons across all five children. Sunday mornings were for church. Every summer meant eight weeks at a 100-year-old waterfront home on the Maine coast, where the family sailed, swam, and golfed together. Chris described Maine as his favourite time of year with his children in more than one interview.
In June 2014, journalist Shelley Levitt visited the Pacific Palisades home for a profile in Live Happy Magazine. She described the household at 6:30 on a weekday morning. Chip, then 13, was half-asleep at the breakfast table. Finley, then eight, was being called downstairs for what seemed like the twelfth time. Ten-year-old Charlie had already dressed himself, eaten breakfast, and was sitting in front of the Golf Channel. Chris O’Donnell’s words for his middle son at that age: “my focused little guy.”
Two Appearances on NCIS: Los Angeles, and Why Most Articles Get It Wrong
Several widely-read articles credit Charlie with NCIS: Los Angeles appearances in Seasons 2 and 3. That was his younger brother Finley. NCIS: LA showrunner R. Scott Gemmill confirmed the full family appearance record in a May 2023 TVLine interview: Charlie appeared in Season 1 only, twice, playing two different characters.
Playing Michael Donnelly in “Past Lives,” Season 1 Episode 12 (January 12, 2010)
Charlie’s first appearance came in episode 12 of Season 1. He played Michael Donnelly, a young boy introduced as the son of Kristin Donnelly, a woman Callen had been in a relationship with while working undercover years earlier under the alias “Jason Tedrow.”
The episode carries something more layered than a straightforward cameo. Michael is old enough in the story to have been fathered during that undercover period, meaning six-year-old Charlie was playing a child who might, within the fiction, be the biological son of the same character his real father plays on screen.
Lily O’Donnell was not in this episode.
Playing Young Callen in “Callen, G.,” Season 1 Finale (May 25, 2010)
Charlie’s second appearance came in the Season 1 finale, the most significant episode of the show’s opening run. He played Young Callen, a childhood version of his father’s lead character. His sister Lily appeared in the same episode as Young Amy, making it the only time the two real-life siblings shared a screen together.
Charlie’s IMDb page lists both Season 1 credits. There are no further acting credits after 2010.
Golf Tournaments, Legally Blonde, and Playing Guitar
Golf Digest reported in November 2014 that Chris was playing regular afternoon nine-hole rounds with all three of his sons, Chip, Charlie, and Finley, and that the four of them had won father-son golf hardware together that year. By 2016, Chris told FORE Magazine he was spending more time caddying for his boys at junior tournaments than playing himself. He described a two-day junior event in Palm Springs where he and his two eldest sons stayed in a hotel together and were on the course every day.
That year, Chris appeared on New York Live and talked about what Charlie had on the go at the time:
“My son Charlie is doing the stage version of Legally Blonde. He’s an interesting little kid. He’s a really good golfer, he plays guitar, and now he’s doing these shows.”
The stage and the golf course were running in parallel through his early and mid-teens. The NCIS fan database records that Charlie is “mostly involved with theater work now,” which lines up with the direction Chris was describing publicly in 2016.
What the confirmed record shows on Charlie’s interests:
- Golf, from childhood through junior tournament level in his early teens
- Stage performance, including a production of Legally Blonde
- Guitar
Where Is Charles McHugh O’Donnell in 2026?
He is 22, based on the East Coast, and not giving interviews.
In October 2025, Chris told People that four of his five children were living on the East Coast, and that filming 9-1-1: Nashville in Tennessee put him geographically closer to them. Those four are Lily, Chip, Charlie, and Finley. Maeve and Caroline remain in California while Chris films in Nashville.
No social media accounts are publicly linked to Charlie. No interviews exist on record. No professional profile appears anywhere online. That pattern holds across all five O’Donnell children. Chris became recognisable in the early 1990s and the family has given the press almost nothing on any of them in the three decades since.
His sister Lily is the closest thing to a public data point among the siblings. She went through Boston College, completed a marketing internship in London, and ended up working in TV distribution at Lionsgate in New York. Her path only became traceable because her LinkedIn profile was publicly accessible at some point. Whether Charlie’s work in theater has continued, and in what form, is simply not on any public record as of March 2026.
What is clear is that at six he walked onto a national television set and did the job. At ten he was already up, dressed, and watching professional golf before his siblings were out of bed. In his early teens he was competing in junior golf tournaments and performing on stage at the same time.
That is a fair amount to know about someone who has never once spoken about himself publicly.
Sources: People — TVLine — IMDb — Golf Digest — Live Happy Magazine (Shelley Levitt, June 17, 2014) — NCIS Fan Database — FORE Magazine (2016)
