British actress Carmen Chaplin, granddaughter of the late Charlie Chaplin, is in town for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Christopher Pike / The National
British actress Carmen Chaplin, granddaughter of the late Charlie Chaplin, is in town for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Christopher Pike / The National

Charlie Chaplin’s timeless legacy lives on with granddaughter, Carmen



It is a relief to report that Carmen Chaplin manages to negotiate a path to our interview without falling down a manhole, being hit on the head with a frying pan or becoming hopelessly entangled in a set of revolving doors.

Also that she is wearing an entirely normal pair of tight blue jeans and sandals, with no sign of baggy trousers or broken down boots or, indeed, any evidence of a waddling gait or flailing arms.

Instead there is a tall slender young woman, with tied-back black hair and a broad smile that crinkles so tightly under her nose that there would be no room even for a false bottle brush moustache.

Still, the family name is impossible to ignore. Her grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, was an elderly man in failing health when she was born in the mid-1970s. He died December 25, 1977.

“I did meet him,” Carmen says. “I was a toddler and he was a very old man so we never had any long conversations. But I have memories – my grandfather lived in his house in Switzerland with my grandmother in this beautiful manor, and we would go there for Christmas and Easter and summer and it was always big family reunions.

“I grew up on a farm in a very kind of hippy upbringing and of course, when we went to see my grandfather it was grand, with butlers, and we had to be good at the table. So I have very strong memories of that contrast and of watching home movies of my grandfather when he was on vacation with my father and his brothers and sisters.”

Some genealogy might be useful here. In 1943, when Chaplin was in his 50s, he fell in love with the 17-year-old Oona O’Neill, daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Eugene O’Neill.

The couple married a month after Oona’s 18th birthday – she was his fourth wife – but the scandal also caused a bitter schism between father and daughter that never healed.

Eight children followed, including Carmen’s father Michael, a writer who also acted in some of his father’s later films, including Limelight. Her mother, Patricia Betaudier, is a Trinidadian painter and she has a sister, Dolores, who is also an actor.

Carmen’s aunt is Geraldine Chaplin, also a celebrated actor, with roles from Doctor Zhivago to Roseland and The Age of Innocence. Her cousin, Geraldine’s daughter Oona (named after her grandmother), is well known from the BBC TV series The Hour but also for Game of Thrones, in which her character Talisa Maegyr, meets a particularly gruesome end in the Red Wedding episode.

Keeping track of all those Chaplins sounds like a full-time job. Carmen runs down the list: “I have cousins in circuses, a bit like the Cirque du Soleil but more pure form, and other cousins who are actors; my sister is an actor. On my grandmother’s side, Oona O’Neil, her father was a stage actor famous for his Count of Monte Cristo which toured in America.”

That artistic streak emerges in other ways. “My parents are not in showbusiness. My father writes and my mother is a painter, but they are artists.

“I have five brothers and sisters and nobody is a lawyer or a doctor. Everybody is an artist. Maybe you go with what your parents do, and we have gone in the same artistic direction.

“They love films and we watch a lot of old films. We were brought up loving movies and it just seemed like a fun thing to do.”

Carmen is in town for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival at the invitation of the Swiss watchmakers Jaeger-LeCoultre, one of the sponsors. She is an official “Friend of the Brand”, but the connection runs much deeper than that.

In 1953, Charlie Chaplin was forced into exile from the United States, for alleged communist sympathies. Settling in Switzerland, Chaplin was presented with a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch, which in turn he passed on to Michael when he was just 14. In time, says Carmen, it will belong to one of her brothers.

She has also directed a short film A Time For Everything for Jaeger-LeCoultre, featuring not just the watch but her mother and new daughter.

Carmen’s other work includes roles in Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World and the 2002 action comedy All About the Benjamins. Next year she will direct her first full-length feature film, with her sister Dolores in the cast, to be shot in Paris, as well as more film roles.

The Chaplin name, she admits, has helped her career even if it hasn’t meant automatic funding. She first became aware of her grandfather’s stature at school: “People would tell us about it, or they would say ‘it’s not true’ or ‘you are lying’.”

As for her decision to follow her grandfather into the profession: “My first clarity is that I wanted to stop school from the first day until the last day so it was always ‘what can I do to stop school’ first. I was scouted out by a model agency and bullied my parents until I stopped school when I was 16.

“I started modelling and at the same time I did acting classes because as a child I was in plays at school, and directed them and wrote them with my sister, and I then I had a Super 8 camera and we did movies as well.

“I alway loved watching films but I think I was intimidated, because of my grandfather, to become an actress. I guess it just felt, I don’t know, a bit pretentious, or I was embarrassed, but modelling was asked of me so it was easier to go that route in the beginning. But I said I would take acting classes at the same time, and very quickly I was only doing that and then I got a role in a film. But I never really had to confirm that I wanted to be an actor.”

Her grandfather grew up in poverty in London, with stage parents; an alcoholic father and a mother committed to a mental hospital. He remains for most people the “Little Tramp” with baggy suit, bowler hat and cane, triumphant eventually against life’s misfortunes.

His best known works include Modern Times in 1936 and The Great Dictator in 1940, in which he satirised Hitler so effectively that he was said to be on a Nazi death list.

Chaplin’s reputation in the US suffered because of his left-wing political views, and while his later films made little lasting impact, he continued working until the late 1960s, returning to America in 1972 for an honourary Oscar.

Carmen says she became aware of his importance at events like a 100th birthday celebration at the Cannes Film Festival. “It seemed very grand to a teenager and whenever we went to Switzerland it was a big deal,” she says.

As a parent, she says, her grandfather was “very Victorian” to his children. In contrast, her parents and her upbringing were more relaxed. “They would say, ‘do what you want to do’.”

She wonders if today’s children will appreciate the genius of her grandfather. “I think that if you tell a child nowadays that they are going to watch a black and white film they would be very unwilling initially to watch it,” she says.

“But for me as a child I grew up in France and his films were on French television a lot and so it was a natural thing to watch.”

On his films, she says they “make me laugh. And cry. I also see my father a lot in his features”.

“And I’ve been to screenings of Charlie’s films with children and it’s surprising. They really laugh and enjoy it. It’s always a pleasure.”

jlangton@thenational.ae

COMPANY PROFILE

Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed 

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Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
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Number of employees: 4
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Types of bank fraud

1) Phishing

Fraudsters send an unsolicited email that appears to be from a financial institution or online retailer. The hoax email requests that you provide sensitive information, often by clicking on to a link leading to a fake website.

2) Smishing

The SMS equivalent of phishing. Fraudsters falsify the telephone number through “text spoofing,” so that it appears to be a genuine text from the bank.

3) Vishing

The telephone equivalent of phishing and smishing. Fraudsters may pose as bank staff, police or government officials. They may persuade the consumer to transfer money or divulge personal information.

4) SIM swap

Fraudsters duplicate the SIM of your mobile number without your knowledge or authorisation, allowing them to conduct financial transactions with your bank.

5) Identity theft

Someone illegally obtains your confidential information, through various ways, such as theft of your wallet, bank and utility bill statements, computer intrusion and social networks.

6) Prize scams

Fraudsters claiming to be authorised representatives from well-known organisations (such as Etisalat, du, Dubai Shopping Festival, Expo2020, Lulu Hypermarket etc) contact victims to tell them they have won a cash prize and request them to share confidential banking details to transfer the prize money.

Ain Issa camp:
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  • Of the adult population, 49 per cent men, 51 per cent women (not including foreigners annexe)
  • Most from Deir Ezzor and Raqqa
  • 950 foreigners linked to ISIS and their families
  • NGO Blumont runs camp management for the UN
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Electoral College Victory

Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate. 

 

Popular Vote Tally

The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.

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Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla

Director: Raed Zeno

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Try out the test yourself

Q1 Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2 per cent per year. After five years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?
a) More than $102
b) Exactly $102
c) Less than $102
d) Do not know
e) Refuse to answer

Q2 Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was 1 per cent per year and inflation was 2 per cent per year. After one year, how much would you be able to buy with the money in this account?
a) More than today
b) Exactly the same as today
c) Less than today
d) Do not know
e) Refuse to answer

Q4 Do you think that the following statement is true or false? “Buying a single company stock usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund.”
a) True
b) False
d) Do not know
e) Refuse to answer

The “Big Three” financial literacy questions were created by Professors Annamaria Lusardi of the George Washington School of Business and Olivia Mitchell, of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Answers: Q1 More than $102 (compound interest). Q2 Less than today (inflation). Q3 False (diversification).

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