Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin was one of the biggest stars of the silent film era. After growing up in poverty in London, England, Chaplin came to America at age 19, where he joined the film industry and began appearing in short films in 1914. He later developed the "Tramp" character that he became well-known for, and which he portrayed in several of his films, including his early feature-length films, before retiring the character after 1936's Modern Times. He co-founded the production company United Artists in 1919, and after the advent of talkies, he still made silent films and didn't move to sound until 1940's The Great Dictator.

Chaplin's popularity fell fast in the 1940's, as he was accused of having communist sympathies, and that, plus a number of scandals he was involved in, drove Chaplin to leave the United States for Switzerland.

Chaplin took on most of the major roles in his films, including directing, writing, and starring in most of them. His films are known for their slapstick humour combined with emotional drama, as well as having political themes (many of his films as "The Tramp" showed his character's struggles against adversity, and The Great Dictator was a parody of Adolf Hitler and the nazi regime, that was considered controversial at the time, as the U.S. still had not yet entered WWII; Chaplin wrote the film's famous ending monologue after discovering the true extent of the horrors the nazis had committed, and said that he would have not made the film if he knew about them beforehand).

Filmography (feature-length films):
 * The Kid (1921)
 * A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923)
 * The Gold Rush (1925)
 * The Circus (1928)
 * City Lights (1931)
 * Modern Times (1936)
 * The Great Dictator (1940)
 * Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
 * Limelight (1952)
 * A King in New York (1957)
 * A Countess From Hong Kong (1967)The Great Dictator - speech