Geraldine Chaplin was born in Santa Monica, California. She was the fourth child of the movie star Charlie Chaplin. She was the first of his eight children with his fourth and last wife, Oona O'Neill. Her grandfather was the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright Eugene O'Neill. When Geraldine was eight years old, the family moved to Switzerland, where she went to school. This is where she learned to speak both French and Spanish. 