Chaplin, Charlie (Sir Charles Spencer) 1889-1977
English film actor and director

Charlie Chaplin was born in Kennington, London, the son of music-hall performers. His father was an alcoholic and died when he was a child, leaving the family in a state of extreme hardship, and his mother was mentally unstable and unable to support him. His first regular education was in the school at the poorhouse, and he took work as a newsboy and glass-blower, indulging his performing ambitions by joining a team of clog dancers. By the age of eight he was a seasoned stage performer, and his skill in comedy developed when he joined the impresario Fred Karno. As a member of Karno's vaudeville company he went to Hollywood in 1914 and there entered the motion picture business, then in its infancy, making over 50 films between 1914 and 1916, including The Pawn Shop and The Vagabond (1916), and Easy Street, The Immigrant and The Adventurer (1917).

In these early comedies he adopted the bowler hat, out-turned feet, moustache and walking-cane which became the hallmarks of his consummate buffoonery in films such as The Kid (1920), The Gold Rush (1924), The Champion (1915) and Shoulder Arms (1918). He achieved greater control of his work by forming United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Snr and director D W Griffith. The Circus (1928) won him a special Oscar for 'versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing'. His art was essentially suited to the silent film and, realizing this, he experimented with new forms when sound arrived, as in City Lights (1931), with music only, and Modern Times (1936), a satire on the age of machines in part speech and part mime.

Eventually he entered the orthodox sound film field with the satirical caricature of Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940), for which he received his only Oscar nomination as best actor. After a long absence, he took on a very different role, that of mass murderer in the black comedy Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which was not popular. He returned to more traditional methods in Limelight (1952), in which he acted, as well as directing and composing the music and dances. His left-wing sympathies caused him to fall foul of the rabid anti-Communist factions of post-war America, and he emigrated to Switzerland. He made only two further films: A King in New York (1957), a biting satire mocking the US way of life, and a Countess from Hong Kong (1967). He was knighted in 1975.

Bibliography: Chaplin published My Autobiography in 1964. In 1992 a film biography Chaplin was directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. See also D Robinson, Chaplin: His Life and Art (1984).