Son of a clown

“I grew up with both parents onstage,” he said. “So what was important, I learned, was to work. My father always resisted distractions. He always said no to people who asked him to be on television, to give interviews. My father will not compromise. He is a rebel.”

His father, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée, created Le Cirque Imaginaire, in France, in the early nineteen-seventies. His mother, Victoria Chaplin — the fourth of eight children of Charlie and Oona O’Neill — worked with him in the circus from the start, touring all over the world. James, at four, appeared onstage with them, together with his older sister, Aurelia. Both started by playing walking suitcases. “My father loved absurd, funny, silly things,” James said. “He cut holes in the suitcases, and we got inside, with our little legs sticking out.”

The Thiérrée children were schooled largely by tutors, but when James turned twelve he went to the American School of Paris, where he perfected his English. “Most of the kids in the school were the children of diplomats,” he said. “I was the son of a clown. You know how vicious kids can be. We were the outsiders, the outcasts. Travelling constantly from place to place made for instability. But we held to the one constant: watching our parents work.”

Thiérrée doesn’t like it when people compare him with his grandfather, to whom he bears a striking resemblance. “They use me as an excuse to give their ideas about Charlie Chaplin. One critic wrote that I have ‘a big pair of shoes to fill,’ “ he said, cracking a small smile. “Everybody has parents and grandparents, and we take something from all of them. But it’s always Chaplin, Chaplin, Chaplin. Aurelia and I will not talk to them.” He pretended to groan. “Actually, I really like the plays of Eugene O’Neill, my great-grandfather — the entire dark Irish package. After all, they stuck me with the name James, the same as O’Neill’s father.”

Excerpted from an article by Lillian Ross in the January 7 issue of ‘The New Yorker’