Charles Chaplin is arguably the most well-known figure in film history. He was the first global star phenomenon of the mass media age and his popularity and the controversy that attended it remains unequalled even to the present day. Chaplin defined film comedy in the silent period. He was, along with DW Griffith, one of cinema's first 'auteurs' handling almost every aspect of his productions and working outside of the influence of the major Hollywood studios almost his entire career.

Made truly independent by his phenomenal early success, Chaplin developed a form of physical comedy through the theme of an impoverished outsider, a tramp, which depicted the painful and tragic conditions of living in the modern age. His comedy went beyond parody or satire and moved to the truly revelatory. His subject matter ranged from unrequited love and comic ineptitude in the workplace to the killing fields of the First World War, the alienation of the city, the danger and oppression of the life of a factory worker, the sinister ranting of a fascist dictator and the chilling calculations of a serial killer.

With such a range of unexpected fodder for comedy it is not surprising that he was dogged by controversy. Always critical of the powerful, he early on attracted the attention and animosity of conservative groups of American society. This was aggravated by his personal life, most notably his promiscuity and penchant for teenage girls. This and his socialist values attracted not only the ire of moral guardians, but also the scrutiny of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Herbert Hoover and the FBI that ultimately resulted in his exile from the US in 1952.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889. His parents were both music hall artistes. His father, Charles Chaplin, had a degree of success in the early 1890s with comic songs before succumbing to alcoholism. His mother, Hannah Hill, briefly had a career but suffered continuous bouts of mental illness throughout her life. Often left to fend for themselves, Chaplin and his brother Sydney were in and out of workhouses from a young age. Chaplin's early childhood was marked by the torments of Victorian London street life, which was the basis for much of his comedy and his most enduring films.

At the age of nine, Charlie joined an act called the Eight Lancashire Lads, a troupe of child clog dancers. From 1903 for three years he played the role of Billy in the play Sherlock Holmes in a touring production and also appeared on the West End stage. During this time he spent a short run working with the American actor manager William Gillette who had originated the Holmes role. Chaplin's most meticulous biographer David Robinson has noted that Gillette's theories of acting focused on an understated type of acting based on 'observation of life', which assisted him in his development of the tramp character and as a film actor later.

The most important development in Chaplin's music hall career came when he joined Fred Karno's sketch comedy troupe. Karno's flair for stage direction and subtle comic touches provided Chaplin with both instruction and a firm grounding for developing comic characters. His most well known role was 'the inebriate' in the sketch comedy 'Mumming Birds'. Chaplin was starring in this production in the US, renamed A Night in an English Music Hall, when he was spotted, probably by Harry Aitken in Los Angeles, despite Mack Sennett's more famous claim for having discovered him in New York.

By the time Chaplin signed to the Keystone Film Company in September 1913 he was a veteran of 14 years on the stage and only 24 years old. He appeared in his first film Making a Living as the character of a down-at-heel English fop. However it was in his second film Kid's Auto Races that he appeared in the Tramp costume that he was to develop for the next two decades. In various versions his inspiration for this character is set down as a desperate improvisation to gain a comic identity before he lost his job or, in Chaplin's own words, from observations of characters he knew from the London streets. His famed waddling walk was derived from a disabled man he knew as a child. Combined with the fast developing film industry Chaplin's distinctive pantomime style reached a worldwide audience and proved immediately popular. His comedy did not fit the frenetic Keystone style at first however as his Karno-base style employed a more deliberate form of comic business. Nevertheless he quickly adapted and began directing in order to best bring out his comic potential.

By the summer of 1915, with the First World War raging, US and Allied audiences were in the grip of what was termed 'Chaplinitis'. Chaplin signed a lucrative contract with Essanay studios and began to introduce pathos into the character of the Tramp. The Tramp in the Keystone and most of the Essanay films is a vicious and opportunistic pest, stealing drinks and accosting girls in the park just out of reach of irate boyfriends and policemen. Chaplin once remarked that all he needed to make a film was a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. At Essanay and later more completely at Mutual he pushed the melodramatic potential of this basic combination to develop empathy for the tramp's situation and to incorporate political and social injustice.

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