His sister Geraldine, 77, declared that their father “was not Charles Chaplin”. “She knew they were the same person, but they didn’t look alike at all, except when he had an audience, he would become Charles Chaplin, that other man,” she said.
Another daughter of the actor, Jane, who is now 64 years old, claimed that her father “was inaccessible”. “Your father is working, don’t bother him, he will lose his inspiration” are the phrases that Jane used to hear when she was a child. “Our world revolved around my father’s well-being,” she said, recounting that Chaplin was haunted by doubts throughout his life and that his difficult past of extreme poverty never left him alone.
“He achieved the dream of his life, but I don’t think he has overcome his doubts. Is one really capable of overcoming where he comes from? I don’t think this will ever leave you,” said Jane, referring to the actor’s traumatic childhood, which he was separated from his mother who was mentally unstable and had to beg on the streets, an experience that marked him for life and was reflected in the film “The Kid” while reminding him that everything could be lost at any moment.
The new documentary also recalls that behind the man everyone knew as a great actor was a person described by his partners as abusive and exploitative. In the same way, it echoes his taste for underage teenage girls with whom he dared to establish sexual and romantic relationships.
The relationship with his future wife Lita Gray started when she was 15, but she noticed her partner on the set of “The Kid” when she was only 12 years old, “attracted by those fascinating eyes” that made her look “very mysterious”, according to Chaplin’s own words, Gray herself wrote in her autobiography published in the mid-1960s, recalling the time when she played the “angel flirty” in the movie.
Source: Ambito
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