The poor guy was doomed for heartthrob roles as soon as he left London for Los Angeles. Chaplin, 28, feels sorely out of place in L.A. At his first industry party, he showed up with a six-pack in a brown bag, saw the bar–and hid. Now he hardly goes out. ““L.A.’s not an easy place to make friends. Socializing is all in people’s houses,’’ he says. ““And people don’t admit to living there. “Where do you live?’ “New York.’ “How long have you been in L.A.?’ “Twenty-five years’.’’ After ““Washington Square,’’ lacking both friends and a job (though he has a girlfriend, whom he won’t discuss), he started playing tennis obsessively. By himself. ““I served–endlessly.''
After five months of long, grueling shoots in Australia for ““Thin Red Line,’’ Chaplin’s almost beginning to miss L.A. Working for the famously brilliant and reclusive Malick has been exhausting. ““He’ll get you so tired you won’t know what you’re doing,’’ he says. ““He’s interested in what you haven’t planned, in what happens by accident.’’ Chaplin did manage to grab a few days off when he gashed his cheek storming a bivouac. He clashed heads with a Japanese soldier, and they lumbered off to the hospital for stitches, in filthy uniforms, dog tags clanking. ““I went first–victor’s privilege,’’ he laughs. Where to next? London? L.A.? ““I don’t know,’’ he says plaintively. ““Where is home?’’ Where the heart is, of course. For Chaplin, that could be anywhere.
