Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.
Chaplin in the early 1920s
Seven-year-old Chaplin (centre, head slightly cocked) at the Central London District School for paupers, 1897
A teenage Chaplin in the play Sherlock Holmes
Advertisement from Chaplin's American tour with the Fred Karno comedy company, 1913
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter-title cards.
A still from 1921's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the highest-grossing silent films
Charlie Chaplin, widely acclaimed as one of the most iconic actors of the silent era, c. 1919
Roundhay Garden Scene, which has a running time of just over two seconds, was filmed in 1888. It is believed to be the world's earliest surviving motion-picture film. The elderly lady in black is Sarah Whitley, the mother-in-law of filmmaker Louis Le Prince; she died ten days after this scene was filmed.
Aziza Amir in Laila (1927)
