Charlie Chaplin
1889 – 1977 · United Kingdom
Known for: The Tramp, cinema's first global icon
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
Biography
He grew up in Victorian London poorhouses so grim they read like fiction, and turned that pain into the Tramp: the little man with the cane, the bowler hat, and more dignity than the whole world lined up against him. In the silent era he became the most famous human being on Earth, mobbed in every country without ever saying a word.
He wrote, directed, produced, scored and starred in his own films, fought the arrival of sound until he could beat it (City Lights, Modern Times), and then used his first real speech, the finale of The Great Dictator, to plead against fascism itself. Exiled from America in the McCarthy years, he returned only once, in 1972, to receive a twelve-minute standing ovation, the longest in Oscar history.