Geraldine Leigh Chaplin (born July 31, 1944)[1][2] is an American actress whose long career has included roles in English, French, Italian, and Spanish films.
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin was born on July 31, 1944, in Santa Monica, California,[1][2][11] the fourth child of actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, and the first child of his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill,[3] whom he married in 1943.[12] Charlie Chaplin was 55 when Geraldine Chaplin was born and Oona was 19 years old. Geraldine was the first of their eight children.[3][12] Her paternal grandparents were English Charles Chaplin Sr. and Hannah Chaplin (born Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill), and her maternal grandparents were Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill and English-born writer Agnes Boulton.[13]
When Geraldine was eight years old, her father took the family on vacation to Britain and Europe. Two days after the family set sail, the U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery signed an order refusing Chaplin permission to re-enter the country.[14] Chaplin's father moved the family to Switzerland.[15] She attended boarding school there, where she became fluent in French and Spanish. Also in this time period, Geraldine appeared in her father's film Limelight (1952).[1]
Career
Dance and modeling
At 17 years of age, Chaplin decided to forgo college to pursue dance instead,[3] and studied ballet for two years in England,[citation needed] including a period in 1961 at the Royal Ballet School.[1] She then danced professionally for a year in Paris.[citation needed] Although a good dancer, she felt she had not trained from an early enough age to excel at it and so gave up ballet.[citation needed]
When her dream of becoming a ballet dancer ended, Chaplin followed her father into what was to become a prolific acting career.[3] She came to prominence[citation needed] in the role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965).[3] Lean chose her to play the main character's wife,[6] for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination in the category, "Most Promising Female Newcomer".[5] In an interview to publicize the film, she explained, "Because of my name, the right doors opened."[17]
In 1967, she made her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes.[7] Her performance was praised by Clive Barnes in a New York Times review, where he noted that Chaplin "acts with spirit and force... with a magnificently raw-voiced sincerity" giving a performance of "surprising power".[18]
She also started what would become a major collaboration that year, starring in Spanish film director Carlos Saura's psychological thriller Peppermint Frappé (1967).[citation needed]
Chaplin starred in several films produced by Altman and directed by Alan Rudolph, with a BAFTA-nominated role in Welcome to L.A. (1976), in which she played a housewife addicted to cab rides.[23] She received critical acclaim for her role in Remember My Name (1978), in which she played Anthony Perkins' murderous estranged wife.[24]
In an interview with The New York Times in 1977,[25] Chaplin cited that her career was going more successfully in Europe than in the United States. She complained that "I only seem to work with Altman here ... I don't have any offers in this country, none. Not even an interesting script to read. The only person who ever asks me is Altman—and James Ivory."[25]
French-language and other roles, 1980–89
This section needs expansion with: in this and the following subsection, a more representative selection of career work, based on published sources. You can help by adding to it. (December 2016)
Chaplin also starred in Rudolph's 1920s-set film, The Moderns (1988).
Chaplin, Scorsese, and Zeffirelli, 1990–99
In the biographical film about her father, Chaplin (1992), she played her grandmother Hannah Chaplin, for which she was nominated for her third Golden Globe Award.[19] Soon after, she was directed by Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), and appeared in Franco Zeffirelli's version of Jane Eyre (1996).
Chaplin's son, Shane Saura Chaplin, was born in 1974. His father is Spanish film director Carlos Saura, who directed several films Chaplin appeared in.
Chaplin's daughter, Oona, is now an actress in British and Spanish films. Chaplin married Oona's father, Chilean cinematographer Patricio Castilla, in 2006.
In 1978, the Chaplin family were the victims of a failed extortion plot by kidnappers who had stolen the body of Charlie Chaplin. Geraldine Chaplin negotiated with the kidnappers, who had also threatened her infant son.[29]
As of 2011[update], Chaplin has maintained a home in Miami. She also was spending time in residences between Madrid and Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland (the latter near the former long-time home of her parents).[30]
Filmography
Chaplin in a break on the set at the Caffè Gambrinus in Naples, Italy
^ abErickson, Harold L.; Barson, Michael (August 25, 2016). "Charlie Chaplin: British Actor, Director, Writer, and Composer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved December 21, 2016.