Geraldine Chaplin on the set of Doctor Zhivago (1965, dir. David Lean) (via) Geraldine Chaplin: I shall get married, certainly. Everyone in the Chaplin household gets married. But I don’t know when, I don’t know to whom. You see…for anyone like me who has witnessed a love as great and incredible as the love that has bound, binds, my father (Charlie Chaplin) and mother (Oona O’Neill)…well, you feel crushed by the fear of never finding one like it. You search for it, a love as great as the love of your father and mother, and you know very well you’ll never find it, because miracles like that only happen once in a hundred, two hundred, years. And so you feel jealous, unhappy. You think: I’ll never have what my father and mother have had, such a miracle, such luck. My father’s had such luck in his life! He’s also had griefs, troubles, humiliations, but in the end everything turned out all right for him, everything! And he’s had fame, respect, riches, love, everything! Even love! Everything! And a child, once he’s grown up, compares himself with him…and thinks things will never turn out as well for him, he’ll never be as good…as lucky…he’ll never have so much love…Q: I’m going to ask, and I beg you to answer me sincerely because, I believe, it’s a very important question. A question that, obviously, concerns your father. This, Geraldine: are you afraid of him?Chaplin: Certainly I’m afraid of my father… Certainly. Very, very afraid. And not only because he’s so unbending, so difficult, so strict. Not only because he always turns out to be right in the end, whatever he says or does. But because… because… how can I put it… I feel this constant reproof, this constant comparison, because I feel I’m in his shadow all the time, all the time, like all of us….yes, I feel that only when I’m no longer in his shadow, when I’m no longer afraid of him, that only then will I be able to do something myself. -1965, published in The Limelighters (Michael Joseph, 1967)Another excerpt from this interview previously posted here.

Geraldine Chaplin on the set of Doctor Zhivago (1965, dir. David Lean) (via)

Geraldine Chaplin: I shall get married, certainly. Everyone in the Chaplin household gets married. But I don’t know when, I don’t know to whom. You see…for anyone like me who has witnessed a love as great and incredible as the love that has bound, binds, my father (Charlie Chaplin) and mother (Oona O’Neill)…well, you feel crushed by the fear of never finding one like it. You search for it, a love as great as the love of your father and mother, and you know very well you’ll never find it, because miracles like that only happen once in a hundred, two hundred, years. And so you feel jealous, unhappy.

You think: I’ll never have what my father and mother have had, such a miracle, such luck. My father’s had such luck in his life! He’s also had griefs, troubles, humiliations, but in the end everything turned out all right for him, everything! And he’s had fame, respect, riches, love, everything! Even love! Everything! And a child, once he’s grown up, compares himself with him…and thinks things will never turn out as well for him, he’ll never be as good…as lucky…he’ll never have so much love…

Q: I’m going to ask, and I beg you to answer me sincerely because, I believe, it’s a very important question. A question that, obviously, concerns your father. This, Geraldine: are you afraid of him?

Chaplin: Certainly I’m afraid of my father… Certainly. Very, very afraid. And not only because he’s so unbending, so difficult, so strict. Not only because he always turns out to be right in the end, whatever he says or does. But because… because… how can I put it… I feel this constant reproof, this constant comparison, because I feel I’m in his shadow all the time, all the time, like all of us….yes, I feel that only when I’m no longer in his shadow, when I’m no longer afraid of him, that only then will I be able to do something myself.

-1965, published in The Limelighters (Michael Joseph, 1967)

Another excerpt from this interview previously posted here.