Geraldine Leigh Chaplin (born July 31, 1944) is an actress whose extensive career has included multilingual roles in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German films. Born in the United States and raised in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, she holds American, British, and Spanish citizenship. She is the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, the first of his eight children with his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill, and thus a granddaughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill.
After beginnings in dance and modeling, she turned her attention to acting, and made her English-language acting debut (and came to prominence in what would be a Golden Globe–nominated role) as Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965). She made her Broadway acting debut in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in 1967, and played ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti in Raúl Araiza's Nefertiti and Akhenaton (Nefertiti y Aquenatos) (1973) alongside Egyptian actor Salah Zulfikar. Chaplin received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville (1975). She received a BAFTA nomination for her role in Welcome to L.A. (1976). She played her grandmother Hannah Chaplin in the biopic Chaplin (1992), for which she received her third Golden Globe nomination.
Chaplin has appeared in a wide variety of critically recognized Spanish and French films. She starred in The Ones and the Others (Les Uns et les Autres) (1981), Life Is a Bed of Roses (La vie est un roman) (1983) and the Jacques Rivette experimental films No King (Revenge) (Noroît (Une vengeance)) (1976) and Love on the Ground (L'Amour par terre) (1984). She was the partner of director Carlos Saura for 12 years until 1979, starring in his films Ana and the Wolves (Ana y los lobos) (1973), Raise Ravens (Cría Cuervos) (1976), Elisa, My Life (Elisa, vida mía) (1977), and Mama Turns 100 (Mamá cumple cien años) (1979). She was awarded a Goya Award for her role in In the City Without Limits (En la ciudad sin límites) (2002), and was nominated again for The Orphanage (El orfanato) (2007). Her contribution to Spanish cinema culminated in her receiving the gold medal from the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in 2006. In 2018, she starred in Red Land (Rosso Istria), an Italian film by Maximiliano Hernando Bruno based on Norma Cossetto and the foibe massacres. In 2019, she played the Duchess of Windsor in season 3 of the Netflix period drama series The Crown.
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin was born on July 31, 1944, in Santa Monica, California, the fourth child of actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, and the first child of his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill, whom he married in 1943. Charlie Chaplin was 55 when Geraldine Chaplin was born and Oona was 19 years old. Geraldine was the first of their eight children. Her paternal grandparents were English Charles Chaplin Sr. and Hannah Chaplin (born Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill), and her maternal grandparents were Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill and English-born writer Agnes Boulton.
When Geraldine was eight years old, her father took the family on vacation to Britain and other parts of Europe. Two days after the family set sail, the U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery signed an order refusing Chaplin permission to re-enter the country. Chaplin's father moved the family to Switzerland. She attended boarding school there, where she became fluent in French and Spanish. Also in this time period, Geraldine appeared in her father's film Limelight (1952).
At 17 years of age, Chaplin decided to forgo college to pursue dance instead, and studied ballet for two years in England, including a period in 1961 at the Royal Ballet School, London. She then danced professionally for a year in Paris. Although a good dancer, she felt she had not trained from an early enough age to excel at it and so gave up ballet.
Chaplin then found work as a fashion model in Paris.
When her dream of becoming a ballet dancer ended, Chaplin followed her father into what was to become a prolific acting career. She came to prominence in the role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965). Lean chose her to play the main character's wife, for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination in the category, "Most Promising Female Newcomer". In an interview to publicize the film, she explained, "Because of my name, the right doors opened."
In 1967, she made her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. Her performance was praised by Clive Barnes in a New York Times review, where he noted that Chaplin "acts with spirit and force... with a magnificently raw-voiced sincerity" giving a performance of "surprising power".
She also started what would become a major collaboration that year, starring in Spanish film director Carlos Saura's psychological thriller Peppermint Frappé (1967) and playing two women in the film, Ana and Elena.
The Hawaiians through Cría Cuervos, 1970–1979
Chaplin starred alongside Charlton Heston in the American historical film The Hawaiians (1970). Chaplin then appeared in The Three Musketeers (1973), and Nefertiti y Aquenatos (1973), directed by Raúl Araiza in which she played the role of ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti alongside Egyptian movie star Salah Zulfikar, as well as the sequel, The Four Musketeers (1974). Chaplin was cast as the obnoxious BBC reporter Opal in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), for which she received her second Golden Globe nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to star in the Altman films Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976), and then A Wedding (1978), doing Roseland (1977) in between. Chaplin later occasionally co-wrote scripts for and starred in several later Saura films—for these, receiving her greatest critical success such as Ana and the Wolves (1973), Cría Cuervos (1976), Elisa, vida mía (1977), and Mamá cumple cien años (1979). Cría Cuervos won the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. Critic Vincent Canby praised Chaplin's "superb" performance.
Chaplin starred in several films produced by Altman and directed by Alan Rudolph, with a BAFTA-nominated role in Welcome to L.A. (1976), in which she played a housewife addicted to cab rides. She received critical acclaim for her role in Remember My Name (1978), in which she played Anthony Perkins' murderous estranged wife.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1977, Chaplin cited that her career was going more successfully in Europe than in the United States. She complained that "I only seem to work with Altman here ... I don't have any offers in this country, none. Not even an interesting script to read. The only person who ever asks me is Altman—and James Ivory."
French-language and other roles, 1980–1989
In the 1980s, Chaplin starred in several French-language roles, including Claude Lelouch's Les Uns et les Autres (1981), Alain Resnais' Life Is a Bed of Roses (1983), Jacques Rivette's experimental Love on the Ground (1984), and then the American film, I Want to Go Home (1989).
Chaplin also starred in Rudolph's 1920s-set film, The Moderns (1988).
Chaplin, Scorsese, and Zeffirelli, 1990–1999