geraldine chaplin

Geraldine Chaplin’s filmography is very extensive –more than a hundred films– and this is due to the fact that, in addition to her great dedication to her work, she does not avoid choosing very secondary, almost marginal roles, if they seem convincing to her. Sometimes just a couple of minutes are enough to make her talent clear, as in the recent films The Impossible or You will find dragons . Perhaps that is why in almost most of her films she has not been the great protagonist, except, of course, for the fantastic time when she became the muse of the Spanish director Carlos Saura .

Geraldine Leigh Chaplin was born on July 31, 1944 in Santa Monica, California, the result of the relationship between Charles Chaplin and his fourth wife Oona Chaplin. When she was eight years old she moved to live in Switzerland and later went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Ballet. It seems that it was precisely there that she was discovered by David Lean , so that he gave her the immortal role of Tonia in his Doctor Zhivago . The actress was then twenty years old and in her thin, bony face and large and expressive black eyes, she could guess the same gesture of the creator of Charlot, so much she resembled her brilliant father. Although she was eight years old, Geraldine, she had appeared in the film Candilejas, his presence was sporadic and had not been credited, so the film based on the work of Boris Pasternak can be considered his debut. That same year she premiered with Jean-Paul Belmondo the thriller Kidnapping under the Sun. Unlike her father, from the beginning and throughout her career she specialized in dramatic, often tormented roles, which she was able to deliver powerfully.

Although in subsequent years he made different European films, including Andremo in città (1966) and Generation in Conflict (1967), the truth is that his first foray into Spain with David Lean left a great mark on him. As of 1967, her connection with Spain would be increased by her sentimental and work relationship with the director Carlos Saura , one of the greatest Spanish filmmakers. With him she lived perhaps the golden age of her career. They shot a total of nine films together, including Peppermint Frappé (1967), Saura’s marvelous tribute to his countryman Luis Buñuel and in which Geraldine played two different women; Ana and the wolves(1973), a brilliant but dark metaphor about the scourges and excesses of the Franco dictatorship; She raises crows (1976), where she was the dead mother of the girl played by Ana Torrent ; Elisa, my life (1977), a drama about a woman in a marital crisis; and Mamá cumples 100 años (1979), the couple’s last joint work. But during the 70’s she did not only shoot for Saura. Her appearances in The Three Musketeers , by Richard Lester , or in Roseland , by James Ivory , as well as her collaboration with Robert Altman in Nashville (1975) andBuffalo Bill and the Indians (1976).

After her time with Saura, Geraldine Chaplin expanded her cinema to other geographies, mainly in Europe, but also shooting several films in the United States. It is true that in general she ceased to be a protagonist, but also that her face became more present on the international scene, since before her acting in Spain she had not obtained much repercussion. She stood out like this with Angela Lansbury in The Broken Mirror (1980); she as Lily Bart in The House of Mirth (1981), an adaptation of Edith Wharton ‘s celebrated novel ; and with the French Claude Lelouch , Jacques Rivette and Alain Resnais in The Ones and the Others (1981),The love for land (1984) and I want to go home (1989), respectively.

Later, she put European cinema aside for a bit and participated in more commercially successful projects, including the unique biopic about her father in Chaplin (1992), where the actress played her real grandmother. For this film, Geraldine received her third Golden Globe nomination. The following year she was under the command of Martin Scorsese in the wonderful The Age of Innocence , the actress’s third film with a script based on a Wharton novel (before she filmed The Children in 1990). She and she also stood out in Jane Eyre (1996). After starring in the careful portrait Mother Teresa: In the Name of God’s Poor (1997), she finally returned to Spanish cinema with the irregular Finisterre(1998), a dense drama with a good cast. Since then Geraldine Chaplin has been a regular face in a multitude of Spanish productions, although she has also occasionally appeared in international cinema. She was a dance teacher in Talk to Her (2003), and a nanny in Encontrarás dragones (2010) among countless tiny roles, to the point that in recent times she has participated in five and even six films in one year. .

Since she played a medium in El orfanato (2007), she has become the fetish actress of the Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona , who has recruited her again for his next two films, The Impossible and A Monster Comes to See Me .

In 2006, Geraldine Chaplin decided to marry cinematographer Patricio Castilla, after a three-decade relationship. Together they have had a daughter, Oona Chaplin , also an actress, born in 1986. Years before, Geraldine had had another son, Shane Saura Chaplin, the result of her twelve-year relationship with Carlos Saura.