Family confirms death of Charlie Chaplin’s daughter

Actress Josephine Chaplin died over a week ago in Paris

Josephine Chaplin, actress and daughter of Charlie Chaplin, has died at the age of 74 in France. Her death came on July 13, but the family officially announced the death just now.

The daughter of Charlie Chaplin and his fourth wife Oona O’Neil, Josephine Chaplin, died July 13 in Paris, her family announced on Friday. The actress, who starred in films such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales, was 74 years old.

According to The Guardian, Josephine Chaplin was the sixth of 11 children born to the comedy screen legend and the third of eight children of Una O’Neill, actress and daughter of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill.

Chaplin met O’Neill in 1942 and married her the following year. According to Chaplin’s office, the silent film star “finally found true happiness and it looks like they both found their soul mates despite Una being only 18 and Charlie being 53.”

Josephine Chaplin was born in Santa Monica, California in March 1949.

As an actress, she starred in Menahem Golan’s politically oriented film Escape to the Sun; with Vittorio De Sica and Maurice Ronet in Fauve Clothes; with Klaus Kinski in the German language film Jack the Ripper; and in Daniel Petrie’s The Bay Boy with Liv Ullman and Kiefer Sutherland.

She first appeared on screen at the age of three in the 1952 film Spotlight, written by her father and directed by the director in the title role. She also appeared in his film The Countess from Hong Kong in 1967. But Chaplin starred in most of her work in French films, including “Red Nights” and “Summer Shadow”, writes The Guardian.

In later life, Josephine Chaplin ran the Chaplin family office in Paris and sponsored the erection of a statue of her father in Waterville, Ireland.

A longtime resident of Paris, she was involved in a bizarre extortion plot shortly after her father’s death in 1978, when two men stole his body and coffin. The family refused to pay the ransom, and the remains were found 11 weeks later. Una O’Neill died in 1991.

Josephine Chaplin was married twice: to Greek businessman Nikki Sistovaris and archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin. She also lived with Rone, a former co-star.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Chaplin is survived by brothers Michael, Eugene and Christopher, sisters Geraldine, Victoria, Jane and Annette, and sons Charlie, Julien and Arthur. The notice of her death said that the funeral would take place in Paris “in the family circle,” notes The Guardian.