Sir Charles Spencer " Charlie " Chaplin, KBE ( 16 April 188925 December 1977 ) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era.

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era.

Chaplin was identified with left-wing politics during the McCarthy era and he was ultimately forced to resettle in Europe from 1952.

In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, wrote: " Chaplin was not just ' big ', he was gigantic.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Hannah Chaplin ( née Hill, 1865 – 1928 ) and Charles Chaplin Sr. ( 1863 – 1901 ).

There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London.

Because of this poverty, Chaplin was sent to a workhouse at seven years old.

In September 1898, Hannah Chaplin was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum — she had developed a psychosis seemingly brought on by malnutrition and an infection of syphilis.

" For the two months she was there, Chaplin and his brother were sent to live with their father, whom the young boy scarcely knew.

Charles Chaplin Sr. was by then a severe alcoholic, and life with the man was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

" There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate ", Chaplin later wrote, and she remained in care until her death in 1928.

Hannah had been booed off stage, and the manager chose Chaplin, who was standing in the wings, to go on as her replacement.

It was an isolated performance, but at nine years old Chaplin became interested in the theatre.

Chaplin worked hard and the act was popular with audiences, but dancing did not satisfy the child and he dreamt of forming a comedy act.

The manager sensed potential in Chaplin and he was soon on the stage.

" It was like tidings from heaven ", Chaplin recalled.

Chaplin quickly began work in another role, touring with his brother — who was also pursuing an acting career — in a comedy sketch called Repairs.

It was popular with audiences and Chaplin became the star of the show.

During a battle in the last months of World War I, the protagonist, an unnamed Jewish private and a barber by profession ( Charlie Chaplin ), is fighting for the Central Powers in the army of the fictional nation of Tomainia, comically blundering through the trenches in combat scenes.

Chaplin's half-brother Sydney Chaplin directed and starred in a 1921 film called King, Queen, Joker in which, like Charlie, he played the dual role of a barber and ruler of a country who is about to be overthrown.

Chaplin ( as the barber ) absent-mindedly attempts to shave Goddard ( as Hannah ) in this image from the trailer for the film.

Famed French film director François Truffaut noted that early in the production, Chaplin said he would not play The Tramp in a sound film, and he considers the barber an entirely different character.

However, Turner Classic Movies says that years later, Chaplin acknowledged a connection between the barber and The Tramp.

Although his memoirs frequently refer to the barber as the Little Tramp, Chaplin said in 1937 that he would not play the Little Tramp in his sound pictures.

Critics who view the barber as different include Stephen Weissman, whose book Chaplin: A Life speaks of Chaplin here " abandoning traditional pantomime technique and his little tramp character.

A full two-page discussion of the relationship between the barber and The Tramp appears in Eric L. Flom's book Chaplin in the Sound Era: An Analysis of the Seven Talkies in which he concludes:

Chaplin plays both " Adenoid Hynkel " ( a satirized Adolf Hitler ) and a Jewish barber who is Hynkel's spitting image.

Although Chaplin emphatically stated that the barber was not The Tramp, he retains the Tramp's moustache, hat, and general appearance.

Despite a few silent scenes, including one where the barber is wearing the tramps ' coat and bowler hat and carrying his cane, the barber speaks throughout the film ( using Chaplin's own British accent ), including the passionate plea for peace that has been widely interpreted as Chaplin speaking as himself.

The state of labour in America was troubling to Chaplin ; he told an interviewer, " Something is wrong.

That Chaplin was unprepared to remain abroad, or that the revocation of his right to re-enter the United States was a surprise to him, may be apocryphal: An anecdote in some contradiction is recorded during a broad interview with Richard Avedon, celebrated New York portraitist.

Its protagonist is an exiled king, played by Chaplin, who arrives in New York with a plan to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Robinson writes that it is possible the Chaplin experienced a series of minor strokes during his convalescence, which marked the beginning of a slow decline in his health.

His fourth wife, Oona Chaplin, is buried next to him.

This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than most other filmmakers at the time.

He also often employed inanimate objects in his films, often transforming them into other objects in an almost surreal way, such as in The Pawnshop ( 1916 ) and One A. M. ( 1916 ), where Chaplin is the only actor aside Chester Conklin's brief appearance in the very first scene.

To some scholars, such as Donald McCaffrey, this is an indication that Chaplin never completely understood film as a medium, but Gerald Mast has argued that by deliberately adopting this approach, Chaplin made " all consciousness of the cinematic medium disappear so completely that we concentrate solely on the photographic subject rather than the process ".

According to film historian Jeffrey Vance, " although he relied upon associates to arrange varied and complex instrumentation, the musical imperative is his, and not a note in a Chaplin musical score was placed there without his assent.

* The third of composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann's 1929 – 30 composition Wachsfigurenkabinett: Fünf kleine Opern ( Waxworks: Five Little Operas ) is entitled ' Chaplin-Ford-Trot ', and features the character of Charlie Chaplin ( in a speaking rather than operatic role ).

A minor planet, 3623 Chaplin, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina in 1981, is named after him.

Chaplin is also a supporting character in several other films, such as The Cat's Meow ( 2001 ), in which he was played by Eddie Izzard and The Scarlett O ' Hara War ( 1980 ), in which he was played by Clive Revill.

The musical is to be adapted for Broadway in 2012, retitled Chaplin – A Musical.

Chaplin is portrayed by Robert McClure in both.

Chaplin is also one of the central characters in Glen David Gold's novel Sunnyside, which is set in the World War I period.

is: Charlie Chaplin

Decades later, he told the American writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, " I'm still a cartoonist and I think that the greatest influence on my films ( besides Chaplin, particularly The Gold Rush ) is probably Disney.

Another, more obvious reference to Hollywood is the Charlie Chaplin impersonator who provides comic relief throughout the film.

A much more comprehensive list of inhabitants between 1815-1821 is provided by Chaplin, Arnold, A St Helena's Who's Who or a Directory of the Island During the Captivity of Napoleon, published by the author in 1914.

The play is similar to the film The Great Dictator ( 1940 ), which also featured an absurd parody of Hitler by Charlie Chaplin.

** Charlie Chaplin is knighted by Elizabeth II.

The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, while having appreciated it " in its own time ," and asserted their belief " that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom ," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.