In a poor home of a performer in a poor section of London during the late 19th century, a child was born into a dim life filled with tragedy. His mother was mad, his father dead by alcoholism; most people in today's society would write this child off, and indeed most did. Who knew that this child would be Charles Spencer Chaplin, the first ever cinematic genius?
Most of Chaplin's early life was spent moving from room to room while his family struggled to pay the rent and stay fed. In his life, the results of poverty were broken up only by off-and-on residency in workhouses for homeless children, and these were the times when his mother was in a mental hospital. It truly is amazing that one of film's greatest comedians came out of such a tragic background. He rose from his almost doomed childhood and became one of the most recognized, and one of the richest, faces in the world. Charlie Chaplin teaches us that sometimes, in the face of adversity, one must simply laugh.
"It is not what you have, but what you do with what you have that matters."