“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself” – Charlie Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin Biography

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, known to the world as Charlie, was born on 16 April 1889 to music hall entertainers Charles Chaplin Sr, a singer and son of a butcher and Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill, who had a brief career under the stage name Lily Harley. By 1891, the couple had split and although they never divorced, Hannah gave birth to another child, a son called George Wheeler Dryden, who was fathered by another music hall entertainer called Leo Dryden, who took the boy away when he was six months old. It would be 30 years before George and Charlie crossed paths again. Chaplin also had another brother called Sydney John Hill who was illegitimate when he was born but had come under the legal care of Charles Sr, when he married Charlie’s mother Hannah.

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It is unclear where Charlie was born, although he always believed it to be on East Street, in Walworth, London. Wherever it was, he and his brother Sydney, spent their early years with their mother in a district of London called Kennington. They had very little income and spent those years in poverty and so when he was seven years old, Charlie found himself in the care of the Lambeth Workhouse. The council found him some schooling at the Central London District School for paupers and although he was reunited with his mother in July 1898, he was soon back in the workhouse and sent to a similar school called Norwood.

Later that year Hannah was committed to a mental asylum called Cane Hill suffering from psychosis which was probably brought on due to a syphilis infection. During this time the boys were sent to stay with their father who was by now an alcoholic and scarcely able to look after them. In 1900 Charles Senior died. It seemed that Hannah was on the road to recovery but in 1903 she had to re-enter Cane Hill. Charlie was fourteen years old at this point and ended up living rough on the streets of London until his brother Sydney came back from the navy in which he had enrolled two years earlier. Hannah came out of care again a few months later but by March 1905 her illness had returned and this time when she went into care she stayed there for thirteen years until her death in 1928.

All through the period of trying to care for his mother and attending poor schools, Charlie had, with encouragement from his mother, started to perform on stage. He started with dancing but his interest lay in forming a comedy act. Just after his mother’s relapse in 1903, Charlie registered with an agency in the West End of London and he soon landed a role as a newsboy in a theatre production called Jim, A Romance of Cockayne. The show was unsuccessful and only lasted a couple of weeks but Charlie’s performance had been singled out for praise by the critics.

The show’s playwright Harry Arthur Saintsbury managed to secure another role for Charlie, this time as a pageboy in a production of Sherlock Holmes which went on three nationwide tours. Charlie’s popularity led to him playing the part in London alongside William Gillette who was the original Holmes. He left the show in 1906 after two and a half years playing the part.

Charlie polished his skills over the next couple of years as a comedic actor and went on tour with his brother who was also trying to become an actor. Although accomplished by the time he was 18 years old, he struggled to find work and an attempt at a solo career failed.

Sydney, however, had landed on his feet when he joined Fred Karno’s comedy company and had become, by 1908, one of their key performers. He managed to get Charlie a two-week trial. He immediately made an impact and after his first night at the London Coliseum, he was offered a contract. Charlie worked his way up from minor roles until by 1909 he was ...