‘Shameless’ Star Cameron Monaghan Celebrates 26th Birthday

As hard as it might be for fans of Shameless who have watched Cameron Monaghan grow and enter adulthood, the actor turned 26 years old on Friday!

According to Famous Birthdays, Cameron was born on August 16 in Santa Monica, California. He and his single mother Diane moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where he spent most of his childhood.

Cameron is best known for his role as Ian Gallagher in Showtime’s acclaimed series Shameless. He since built a name for himself in the Fox series Gotham as Jerome Valeska and Jeremiah Valeska (the Joker). Cameron is the youngest actor to date to land a role as the Joker.

While he is best known for Shameless and Gotham, he has many other credits under his name. Cameron played Mason in Vampire Academy in 2014. He also had appearances in Malcolm in the Middle, Monk, Fringe, and NCIS.

The official Instagram page for Shameless shared a video clip a little over an hour ago. The clip featured the different facial expressions of Cameron while wishing him a happy birthday. In the caption, the Shameless account encouraged fans to wish the young actor a happy birthday.

The post was quickly showered with love as over 40,000 fans of the series pressed play on the video. Just shy of 600 Instagram users also took to the comments to wish Cameron a happy birthday.

Cameron’s return to Shameless in the upcoming Season 10 is highly anticipated by fans after his decision to exit the show following an eight-season and more-than-100-episode stretch.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Cameron didn’t have plans to return to the series when he walked away. He believed Ian Gallagher had reached a “logical conclusion” as he got carted off to jail for his stunt as “Gay Jesus.”

Like fans of the series, Cameron is eager to revive Gallavich.

While the actor did make a brief appearance in the Season 9 finale, John Wells revealed that he did a huge amount of persuading to bring the young actor back as a full-time cast member for Season 10.

Ultimately, the reason Cameron decided to return to the series was because he wanted to explore his “almost Shakespearean” relationship with his on-screen boyfriend Mickey Milkovich (played by Noel Fisher).

“There’s still a lot of story to tell. We’ve never really had these characters just together in a somewhat stable environment for very long, so that’s been fun to explore,” Cameron explained.

Shameless Season 10 is slated to premiere on November 3 only on Showtime.