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.

This process, which could take months, would start with Chaplin describing to the composer ( s ) exactly what he wanted and singing or playing a tune he had come up with on the piano.

Welles sought to direct the film with Chaplin as star, but Chaplin backed out at the last minute, on the grounds that he'd never been directed by somebody else in a full length feature film before and wasn't willing to start ( which was not technically correct since he was directed in one feature film during his Keystone days.

Charlie Chaplin got his start at Keystone when Sennett hired him fresh from his vaudeville career to make silent films.

Roughly seven minutes from the start of the film, Chaplin and the store's floorwalker, Lloyd Bacon, stumble into opposite doors of an office and are intrigued by their likeness to each other.

`` Behind that Charlie Chaplin moustache and that truant lock of hair that always covered his forehead, behind the tirades and the sulky silences, the passionate orations and the occasional dull evasive stare, behind the prejudices, the cynicism, the total amorality of behavior, behind even the tendency to great strategic mistakes, there lay a statesman of no mean qualities: Shrewd, calculating, in many ways realistic, endowed -- like Stalin -- with considerable powers of dissimulation, capable of playing his cards very close to his chest when he so desired, yet bold and resolute in his decisions, and possessing one gift Stalin did not possess: The ability to rouse men to fever pitch of personal devotion and enthusiasm by the power of the spoken word ''.

" His early years were spent with his mother and brother in the London district of Kennington ; Hannah had no means of income, other than occasional nursing and dressmaking, and Chaplin Sr. provided no support for his sons.

From October 1903 to June 1904, Chaplin toured with Saintsbury in Charles Frohman's production of Sherlock Holmes.

Several months of unemployment followed, however, and Chaplin lived a solitary existence while lodging with a family in Kennington.

After some adjustments, Chaplin signed with Keystone on 25 September.

" For his second appearance in front of cameras, Chaplin selected the costume with which he became identified.

In June, Keystone issued adverts in Britain with the words: " Are you prepared for the Chaplin boom?

The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company sent Chaplin an offer of $ 1, 250 a week with a signing bonus of $ 10, 000.

Chaplin was unimpressed with the conditions there, and after making one film ( His New Job, released 1 February 1915 ), moved to the company's small studio in Niles, California.

She went on to appear in 35 films with Chaplin over eight years.

The use of pathos was developed further with The Bank, released four films and four months later, as Chaplin chose to have a sad ending.

Shops were stocked with Chaplin merchandise, he was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about the star.

A contract was negotiated with Mutual that amounted to $ 670, 000 a year, making Chaplin — at 26 years old — one of the highest paid people in the world.

For The Pawnshop he recruited the actor Henry Bergman, who was to work with Chaplin for 30 years.

Despite this campaign Chaplin was a favourite with the troops, and his popularity continued to grow worldwide.

Frustrated with their lack of concern for quality, Chaplin joined forces with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D. W. Griffith to form a new distribution company — United Artists, established in January 1919.

Karno selected his new star to join a fraction of the company that toured North America's vaudeville circuit ; he also signed Chaplin to a new contract, which doubled his pay.

Chaplin recalled: " I had a disquieting feeling of sinking back into a depressing commonplaceness ", and was therefore " elated " when a new tour began in October.

Chaplin thought the Keystone comedies " a crude mélange of rough and rumble ", but liked the idea of working in films and justified, " Besides, it would mean a new life ".

With the new year, however, Chaplin began to demand more time.

The star's primary concern in finding a new distributor was independence ; Sydney Chaplin, then his business manager, told the press: " Charlie be allowed all the time he needs and all the money for producing the way he wants ...

With Georgia Hale his new leading lady, Chaplin began filming the picture in February 1924.

Chaplin was cynical about this new medium and the technical shortcomings it presented, believing that " talkies " lacked the artistry of silent films.

It was these concerns that stimulated Chaplin to develop his new film.

Chaplin founded a new production company, Attica, for the film and rented a studio from Shepperton Studios for the shooting.

The first of the re-releases was The Chaplin Revue ( 1959 ), which included new versions of A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim, and How to Make Movies, a film he had made in 1918 to show his new studio and which had never before been released.

Despite the setbacks, Chaplin was soon writing a new film script, The Freak, a story of a winged girl found in South America, which he intended as a starring vehicle for his daughter, Victoria Chaplin.

Since 2011 the town has also been host to the annual Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival, which was founded to celebrate Chaplin's legacy and to showcase new comic talent.

After their criticism of Charlie Chaplin and split with the movement, the Ultra-Lettrists continued to cause disruptions when they showed their new hypergraphical techniques.

In 1942, Chaplin released a new version of The Gold Rush, taking the original silent 1925 film and composing and recording a musical score, adding a narration which he recorded himself, and tightening the editing which reduced the film's running time by several minutes.

In 1967, Chaplin composed a new musical score for the film and a recording of him singing " Swing High Little Girl " playing over the opening credits.

Chaplin was the studio's biggest moneymaker, and Essanay resorted to creating " new " Chaplin comedies from file footage and out-takes.

In short order, a new building was built on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Sigmund Freud, A.

A new film adaption, The Monk, was made by French-German director Dominik Moll in 2011, it was shot in Madrid and stars Vincent Cassel, Déborah François, Geraldine Chaplin, and Sergi López i Ayats.

Chaplin reissued the edited film with a new musical score — replacing the original score by Louis F. Gottschalk -- in 1976, a year before his death.