Charlie Hoyland

Charles "Charlie" Hoyland is a fictional character in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by the child actor Jacob Brito from October 2008, taking over from Aaron Aulsebrook-Walker. He has recently been SORAS'd to being 4 years old. He is the son of Max (Stephen Lovatt) and Stephanie Hoyland (Carla Bonner).

Character's background
After many months of trying to conceive, as well as failing to adopt, Steph and Max were beginning to give up hope of ever having a child of their own, when she suddenly found out that she was pregnant. For the first half of the pregnancy, things went well, but as the birth got closer, Steph suddenly found herself in the middle of a nightmare as she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she had already beaten once in 2003. Signs of this were dreams about a) Drew Kirk and b) the baby boy aged 15 and Steph's brother Oscar aged 18. Steph refused to have any treatment for it until her miracle baby, whom she had already named Charlie after her grandfather, was born. Her refusal caused a huge rift between Max and Steph, but she stuck to her decision and Charlie was safely delivered in March 2006, before his mother was rushed in for emergency surgery to remove the cancerous growth.

Lyn overcompensated her own neglect of her baby Oscar by mollycoddling Steph and Charlie. However another rift grew between mother and daughter after Steph revealed she wasn't planning to christen Charlie. Lyn's strict Catholic upbringing went against this idea and Lyn tried to manipulate Max and Steph into going along with her wishes, but failed and drove them further away from her. The final straw came when Lyn found a vicar who would christen Charlie without his parents' consent. Susan accompanied her against her better judgement. But Janae Hoyland overhead and alerted Max and Steph. Steph lashed out toward her mother, telling her to stay away from Charlie and them if she couldn't accept that they decided what was best for him. They were not on speaking terms for several weeks.

Robert Robinson (Adam Hunter) turned the gas on in the Robinsons' house while Izzy (Natalie Bassingthwaighte) was babysitting Charlie. Lyn (Janet Andrewartha), Charlie's grandmother, discovered this and successfully got Charlie out before he was harmed. It should be noted that Izzy was asleep while this was happening, and Lyn seemed to have no feelings towards the possible outcome of Izzy.

After Max accidentally killed Cameron Robinson (also Adam Hunter), Cameron's sister Elle (Pippa Black) tried to drive Max insane, using Charlie on two separate occasions. She firstly pushed him out on to the road in front of the garage when nobody was looking. Then when Max was babysitting Charlie she broke in and stole him while Max was in the kitchen. Then when Max started looking for him she returned him after he left the house so it seemed that Max was suffering a nervous breakdown.

He was held hostage along with Steph, Katya Kinski (Dichen Lachman), Toadfish Rebecchi (Ryan Moloney) and Zeke Kinski (Matthew Werkmeister) by Guy Sykes (Fletcher Humphrys), who was after the money Katya has made stealing cars.

Charlie was rushed to hospital as it was supected her had eaten some drugs he found in the bin, put there by Stonie Rebecchi. But Charlie had not touched them after all and he was fine.

He was also later held hostage with Steph by Jay Duncan (Charlie Clausen) in a log cabin, but was rescused by Toadie and Nicola after Steph left him wondering the forest to save him from Jay. Currently Charlie appears to be much older and now has curly hair. He can now talk (as before he was mute). He has not been in any main storylines yet.

Greg
When Steph's boyfriend Greg returned after three months away, Steph called Charlie into their living room so Libby could take him to creche however, his face was covered in yogurt so when he gave his mother a cuddle, her outfit, which she had specially chosen to wear to impress Greg, got covered in yogurt marks. Later, when Steph and Greg were at a dinner party at the Kennedy house, Steph stated that Charlie was warming to Greg as he had discovered that Greg could make "a mean paper areoplane."