Early on in Charlies life his sister died when he was just 12 years old. This gave him a slow start in life and at that stage acting was not a part of it.
His interest in acting did not come until junior high when a crush on another student lead him to audition for Oliver to impress her, and he mentioned that "not only did the girl happen to be cute, but she was the only girl in the school shorter than me." (He is now 5'6") He later got the lead in Oliver, started dating her and fell in love with acting. He later went on to study at Ithaca college where he obtained a BFA in musical theatre. It was there which he learnt to play the guitar, piano, drums and started writing songs.
In 1992 he met Colleen on the west coast and two years later on the 7th May 1994 they married. Colleen was from Chicago with 5 other siblings and is a publicist. He now has two daughters, Julia-Marie who was born on the 8th September, 1997 and Quinn, who was born in October/November 1999. Whilst dating Colleen he started playing golf as most of her family all played. Once he started he loved it and then started playing regularly when he was unemployed. He still does golf tournaments from time to time.
Whilst in a school play, a casting director spotted him and after being screen tested with dark hair and eyebrows he got auditioned for Bright Lights Big City. He read with both the director and Michael J. Fox and then got the part of Michael J. Fox's little brother. He describes his break into acting as being in the right place at the right time.
In 1995 Charlie Schlatter was bought on to Diagnosis Murder to provide comic relief to the show and for him it was a real honour working with Dick Van Dyke although he also enjoyed working with Barry Van Dyke and Victoria Rowell too. Charlie also missed working with Michael Tucci after he left Diagnosis Murder. Charlie Schlatter liked working on Diagnosis Murder as he got to meet all people who inspired him in his acting. He finds it hard not to ask for autographs of stars he works with on Diagnosis Murder but keeps a camera so he can take pictures of the big stars with himself for his wife.