# 3. "Charlie" Chaplin.
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the era of silent movies.
He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other routines of visual comedy, and continued well into the era of the talkies. But his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s.
His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the in 1914. From the April 1914 onwards he was writing and directing most of his films. By 1916 he was also producing them. From 1918 he was even composing the music for them.
He co-founded the United Artists in 1919 with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith.
Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, Max Linder, the French silent film comedian to whom he dedicated one of his films.
His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88.
His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. In 1999 he was ranked as the tenth greatest male screen legend of all time.
Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I.
Over the next 25 years, through the great depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the job. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most.
G.B.Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".
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