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
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


James Langton
  • English
  • Arabic

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

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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What is a robo-adviser?

Robo-advisers use an online sign-up process to gauge an investor’s risk tolerance by feeding information such as their age, income, saving goals and investment history into an algorithm, which then assigns them an investment portfolio, ranging from more conservative to higher risk ones.

These portfolios are made up of exchange traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to indices such as US and global equities, fixed-income products like bonds, though exposure to real estate, commodity ETFs or gold is also possible.

Investing in ETFs allows robo-advisers to offer fees far lower than traditional investments, such as actively managed mutual funds bought through a bank or broker. Investors can buy ETFs directly via a brokerage, but with robo-advisers they benefit from investment portfolios matched to their risk tolerance as well as being user friendly.

Many robo-advisers charge what are called wrap fees, meaning there are no additional fees such as subscription or withdrawal fees, success fees or fees for rebalancing.

RACE CARD

4pm Al Bastakiya – Listed (TB) $150,000 (Dirt) 1,900m

4.35pm Dubai City Of Gold – Group 2 (TB) $228,000 (Turf) 2,410m

5.10pm Mahab Al Shimaal – Group 3 (TB) $228,000 (D) 1,200m

5.45pm Burj Nahaar – Group 3 (TB) $228,000 (D) 1,600m

6.20pm Jebel Hatta – Group 1 (TB) $260,000 (T) 1,800m

6.55pm Al Maktoum Challenge Round-1 – Group 1 (TB) $390,000 (D) 2,000m

7.30pm Nad Al Sheba – Group 3 (TB) $228,000 (T) 1,200m

Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
ELIO

Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett

Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina

Rating: 4/5

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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What are the influencer academy modules?
  1. Mastery of audio-visual content creation. 
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While you're here
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How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE

When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.

PROFILE OF HALAN

Started: November 2017

Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga

Based: Cairo, Egypt

Sector: transport and logistics

Size: 150 employees

Investment: approximately $8 million

Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar

if you go

The flights

Etihad, Emirates and Singapore Airlines fly direct from the UAE to Singapore from Dh2,265 return including taxes. The flight takes about 7 hours.

The hotel

Rooms at the M Social Singapore cost from SG $179 (Dh488) per night including taxes.

The tour

Makan Makan Walking group tours costs from SG $90 (Dh245) per person for about three hours. Tailor-made tours can be arranged. For details go to www.woknstroll.com.sg

'Panga'

Directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari

Starring Kangana Ranaut, Richa Chadha, Jassie Gill, Yagya Bhasin, Neena Gupta

Rating: 3.5/5