R.I.P. Josephine Chaplin

We’ve learned of the sad news of the passing a key member of Charlie Chaplin’s massive clan, his daughter Josephine (1949-2023).

Josephine Chaplin was the comedian’s sixth child, the third from his prolific union with Oona O’Neill. She was her sister Geraldine’s rival in beauty, though interestingly she favored her father more in appearance than her mother. We know that Chaplin was obsessed with Napoleon, I can’t help but wonder if the Empress was the inspiration for his daughter’s name.

As a child Josephine had appeared in her dad’s movies Limelight (1952) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1966). Her career as an adult began in earnest in 1972 when she appeared in Escape to the Sun with Laurence Harvey, and Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales. Most of her over two dozen screen credits with in French cinema and television. Some notable ones include the 1975 miniseries The Man Without a Face, the 1976 movie Jack the Ripper with Klaus Kinski, and the 1988 tv mini-series Hemingway with Stacy Keach. She retired from acting not long after this to run the family’s office in Paris.

She had three long term relationships (two of those were marriages): with furrier Nicholas Sistovaris, actor Maurice Ronet, and archeologist Jean-Claude Gardin. She bore each of these men a son; her sons are Charly Sistovaris, Julien Ronet, and Arthur Gardin.