Family
Charlie Chaplin and Oona had eight children together:
- Actress Geraldine (born. July 31, 1944, longtime partner to Spanish film director Carlos Saura)
- Michael (born. March 7, 1946)
- Josephine (born. March 28, 1949, mother of Julien Ronet (b. 1980) by Maurice Ronet)
- Victoria (born. May 19, 1951, married to Jean-Baptiste Thieree, parents of Aurelie and James (b. May 2, 1974, in Lausanne))
- Eugene (born. August 23, 1953)
- Jane (born. May 23, 1957, unmarried)
- Annette (born. December 3, 1959, unmarried)
- Christopher (born. July 6, 1962, unmarried)
She was also the second stepmother (after Paulette Goddard) to Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925–1968) (he was born 10 days before Oona) and Sydney Chaplin (1926–2009). Their mother was Lita Grey (1908–1995).
Geraldine thought very highly of her mother, and when she was cast in Doctor Zhivago (1965), she decided to base her performance as the title character's wife on her mother, whom she described as "a woman who was willing to give her life to an artist."
In 2006, Chaplin's granddaughter, model and actress Kiera Chaplin (daughter of Eugene Chaplin), visited Tao House, where her maternal great-grandfather had lived. She has announced that she would like to play her grandmother in a film. The same year, daughter Jane Chaplin announced that she had written a memoir entitled "Seventeen Minutes with my Father," which she said would not be easy on her mother.
In March 1975, three years after briefly returning to the United States to receive a special Academy Award, Charlie Chaplin was knighted. His health declined rapidly afterwards, and he died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of eighty-eight.
Following Chaplin's death, Oona moved to New York where she attempted to build a life on her own. She retreated to the manor in Switzerland where she became a recluse. She died of pancreatic cancer on September 27, 1991, in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: Oona O'Neill
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“Anytime we react to behavior in our children that we dislike in ourselves, we need to proceed with extreme caution. The dynamics of everyday family life also have a way of repeating themselves.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let “born again” patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)