Exterior, patio of Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow Banana palms and pink stucco.

SIR RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH [round, white-haired, chaise-bound in a Harrods safari suit or other raiment favored by British directors, speaking precisely into telephone]: Here is someone who was as famous if not more famous than anyone who has ever lived. Now inasmuch as his life spans something like eighty years and inasmuch as his life parallels the history of filmmaking, you have the problem of what to choose to show in a movie running two hours. His imagery on the screen, in Modern Times, in City Lights, in a large number of instances' emanates from his early years, when he collected fish heads on the banks of the Thames in order to feed his mother, and so on. So there's no two fucking ways about it, you've got to show the whole life. There's a debate and discussion between himself and the editor of his autobiography, played by Tony Hopkins, and through that device we jump to certain scenes or sequences, which examine quite succinctly, instead of having a reporter saying, "A then what happened, Mr. Chaplin?"

Interior, chic London office.

DIANA HAWKINS: . . . Chaplin. The silly thing is it winds up being called Chaplin because there was that picture about a retarded person called "Charlie", with the "r" going the wrong way, and they apparently hope to make a sequel. But it was when Dick first suggested we call it Charlie that I knew the film was going to work.

ATTENBOROUGH: He was one of the great figures of the world. And to impersonate the greatest impersonator you've ever heard of and to play him from the age of seventeen to eighty-three must be one of the most difficult jobs that any actor could take up. Not everybody thought it was a good idea that I was casting a young bratpack actor in a very serious part. But obviously, if I hadn't thought Robert could come up with it I wouldn't have cast him.

Interior, Hollywood photographer's studio.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. [squatting on the floor in baggy clothing reminiscent of the Tramp, physical kin to both young Chaplin and Mr. Toad, spiritual cousin of Zooey Glass, if Zooey Glass worshipped Joseph Campbell instead of the Buddha]: It was everything from the ultimate honor to waking up sweating mortar shells, convinced I was an absolute sham. Part of me, the goat boy in me, felt I was in perpetual detention. My dialect coach would say, "You know, I'm sorry, Robert, but we simply must block more time." and I'd be like "What more time?" But Attenborough was amazing. It was like he was preparing an unwed mother through the gestation of a child she wasn't completely ready to have."

ATTENBOROUGH: He surpassed my wildest dreams. He is a phenomenon. He gives a performance of miraculous quality.

DOWNEY: We have a mutual admiration. We were on an almost mythic quest. Chaplin was one of the two major archetypes of the twentieth century. [Pauses significantly]

REPORTER: Who was the other?

DOWNEY: Adolf Hitler. Same available energy and drive, different purposes. My point of identification with Chaplin was the intense desire to show the humor in the sadness. And to want to almost disown the healing ability of that, because there's no satisfaction in the search until you come to terms with whatever your blocks are. I think what he is really looking for throughout the whole movie is love. He doesn't find true love, which he says in his autobiography is the most beautiful of all frustrations, until after he's turned away by the country he did so much for. Then he was freed up to realize that all he was really looking for was Oona.

Interior, dressing room of photographer's studio.

MOIRA KELLY [in thick makeup, hair curlers and flowered bathrobe]: She wasn't like other eighteen-year-olds. Charlie could relate to her in a lot of ways that he couldn't with the other women he was involved with. She wasn't frivolous. When they were forced to pick up their lives and move out of the country because of his liberalism, she never said a word. She came back to America and in two days wrapped up all of this affairs - the house, the business, everything - and went back to Switzerland.

ATTENBOROUGH: They were absolutely devoted. You'd go into a room and be talking to Charlie, and Oona would get up and go into the bedroom, and though Charlie listened to what you were saying or even talking himself, his eyes never left the bedroom door.

KELLY: It was sort of a taboo that the two of them got together, Oona being so young, but as my mother always says, you know when you meet the right person.

ATTENBOROUGH: He was sort of Woody Allen of this period, you know. But I've never seen two people more in love. And Moira and Robert worked marvelously together. I didn't even test Moira. I didn't look at any of the movies. I just knew.

DOWNEY: The first day we shot her dailies, it was like watching Elizabeth Taylor's screen test. We were like "Oh, that's what they mean about presence." Thers's something about Moira that kind of woke up a part of me. The whole film was that way. To be given the opportunity to play someone who operated only from a place of integrity... let's just say I've undergone the factory belt of humility and realignment, and it's sent me in some new directions.

REPORTER: Like what?

DOWNEY: At the moment I'm writing something.

REPORTER: What?

DOWNEY: I'm writing a film for the first time.

REPORTER: How's it going?

DOWNEY: Really hard, but I love it because it's about something I want to talk about.

REPORTER: What?

DOWNEY: It's hard to explain--

[Robert Downey, Jr., is called into makeup. Reporter seeks Moira Kelly to inquire about new directions in Moira's career, encounters Moira Kelly's publicist]

PUBLICIST: She just finished an HBO film about America ten years in the future and how the Facist government is dealing with an AIDS-like epidemic. She's meeting on some other films. Every director in town knows about her. There's a buzz about her. (Catching self) But she's very grounded, very close to her family and brothers and sisters...

[Downey reappears with fresh makeup and resolve to discuss his script.]

DOWNEY: So I had this idea about a narcoleptic dog walker....