Charlie Chaplin grew up in extreme poverty in London, in and out of workhouses as a child after his mother, a former performer, was institutionalized for severe mental illness and his father, also a performer, was largely absent and struggled with alcoholism, leaving Charlie and his brother to fend for themselves for long stretches.
He began performing on stage as a child to help support the family, eventually joining a touring comedy troupe that brought him to the United States, where he entered the fledgling film industry in 1913, developing the character of the Tramp — a shabbily dressed but endlessly resourceful figure — that would define his career.
During the Great Depression, when much of Hollywood shifted quickly to sound film, Chaplin deliberately continued making largely silent films for years longer than most of his peers, betting that his particular visual style of comedy communicated more universally, across languages and literacy levels, than dialogue-driven films could.
His films offered audiences worldwide, many facing real economic hardship of their own, a chance to laugh at a character who was poor, resourceful, and stubbornly optimistic despite constant setbacks — a character audiences recognized because it echoed the very childhood Chaplin himself had survived.