Oona Chaplin is the actor behind “Avatar: Fire and Ash” villain Varang. She’s also the granddaughter of film icon Charlie Chaplin. Oona, whose credits also include “Game of Thrones,” recently told The Times of London that she considered changing her name after graduating from Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starting her pursuit of a full-time acting career.
“It’s been a journey to feel deserving, because I know that doors have opened for me that potentially wouldn’t have opened if I wasn’t associated with this brilliant man,” Oona Chaplin said. “It’s definitely tricky to feel undeserving of the place you’re in.”
She decided against changing her name, however, because her mindset shifted “from guilt to gratitude by working really hard and knowing that whatever I do is never going to compare to what my grandfather did. If all my purpose in this realm is for people to say, ‘Oh, Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter’, and they google him and watch a movie of his, then I’m happy because he’s such a genius.”
Oona’s mother, Geraldine Chaplin, was Charlie’s daughter and was also an actor in her own right. While “Avatar: Fire and Ash” marks Oona’s first major Hollywood blockbuster film, she’s been acting professionally since 2007. Her credits also include “Taboo,” “The Crimson Field” and “Black Mirror.”
The actor told The Times of London that she believes Charlie Chaplin “would’ve been on board” with the “Avatar” movies, adding: “I feel like James Cameron is probably one of the closest things that we have to Chaplin now, even though they’re really different. They know what they’re talking about, so people listen.”
Cameron told IndieWire during his latest “Avatar” press tour that he was originally “seeing women whose names you would know instantly, who were already stars and people that I had really wanted to work with” when he was casting the role of Varang.
“It was a hard decision to turn against faces and names that I already knew, but Oona surprised me with her perception of the character, her way of moving, and her utter fearlessness,” he added about casting Chaplin. “And she was well-prepared — she knew the scene cold, and it was seven or eight pages.”
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is now playing in theaters nationwide.
