A pleasant young comic leading man with a ready smile and a kind of awkward, goofy persona, Charlie Schlatter found a niche in the mid-1990s as second banana to and occasional comic relief for Dick Van Dyke on the CBS series "Diagnosis Murder", in which he filled a spot vacated by Scott Baio. The actor began landing feature film roles right out of Ithaca College, playing Michael J. Fox's younger brother in "Bright Lights, Big City" (1988) and the grandson whose body is taken over by George Burns in "18 Again!" (1988). He had a third film released in 1988, "Heartbreak Hotel", in which he was a teen who kidnaps Elvis Presley, but a big film career did not materialize. Schlatter went to Australia for "The Delinquents" (1989), a 50s era teen movie, but his U.S. film career since has been sporadic, with appearances in "All American Murder" (1992), and "Ed" (1996).
Instead, Schlatter turned to TV. In 1990, he was tapped to embody the wise-cracking high school student "Ferris Bueller" in the short-lived NBC sitcom based on the hit movie starring Matthew Broderick. The same year, Schlatter's distinctive, if a bit squeaky, voice was first utilized for animated character work with "Captain Planet" (TNT). He later lent his vocals to the role of the tadpole in "Fish Police" (CBS, 1992). Additionally, the actor has appeared in a handful of TV-movies ranging from the comedy "Stormy Weathers" (ABC, 1992), opposite Cybill Shepherd, and the actioner "Sunset Heat" (HBO, 1992), alongside Dennis Hopper. When it seemed that Schlatter would be relegated to the "whatever happened to" file, he was cast in 1995 as Dr Jesse Travis, the sidekick to Van Dyke's Dr Mark Sloan on "Diagnosis Murder".