Oona O'Neill - Family

Family

Charlie Chaplin and Oona had eight children together:

• Actress Geraldine (born. July 31, 1944, longtime partner to Spanish film director Carlos Saura)
• Michael (born. March 7, 1946)
• Josephine (born. March 28, 1949, mother of Julien Ronet (b. 1980) by Maurice Ronet)
• Victoria (born. May 19, 1951, married to Jean-Baptiste Thieree, parents of Aurelie and James (b. May 2, 1974, in Lausanne))
• Eugene (born. August 23, 1953)
• Jane (born. May 23, 1957, unmarried)
• Annette (born. December 3, 1959, unmarried)
• Christopher (born. July 6, 1962, unmarried)

She was also the second stepmother (after Paulette Goddard) to Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925–1968) (he was born 10 days before Oona) and Sydney Chaplin (1926–2009). Their mother was Lita Grey (1908–1995).

Geraldine thought very highly of her mother, and when she was cast in Doctor Zhivago (1965), she decided to base her performance as the title character's wife on her mother, whom she described as "a woman who was willing to give her life to an artist."

In 2006, Chaplin's granddaughter, model and actress Kiera Chaplin (daughter of Eugene Chaplin), visited Tao House, where her maternal great-grandfather had lived. She has announced that she would like to play her grandmother in a film. The same year, daughter Jane Chaplin announced that she had written a memoir entitled "Seventeen Minutes with my Father," which she said would not be easy on her mother.

In March 1975, three years after briefly returning to the United States to receive a special Academy Award, Charlie Chaplin was knighted. His health declined rapidly afterwards, and he died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of eighty-eight.

Following Chaplin's death, Oona moved to New York where she attempted to build a life on her own. She retreated to the manor in Switzerland where she became a recluse. She died of pancreatic cancer on September 27, 1991, in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.