Oona Chaplin at the premiere of James Cameron's film "Avatar: Fire and Ash" at the BFI IMAX in London on December 11, 2025. DAVE BENETT/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGE
To keep the interview schedule running on time, Disney sent in its top handlers, but Oona Chaplin could not care less. Ignoring their calm expressions and relentless clocks, the Spanish-British actress took her time describing, in detail, her signature recipe. "I love cooking fish – sole, sea bass or cod – with coconut milk, red onions, basil, mango…," she listed, smiling. "And a bit of pineapple!"
As she was speaking, the golden snakes hanging from her ears seemed to writhe in delight. Just an optical illusion, in truth. But you could say that, at 39 years old, the actress embodied Varang, the villain in Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third high-budget, effects-driven installment of James Cameron's saga, recently released in theaters.
No prompting was needed; the actress herself drew a comparison between the Canadian filmmaker and her maternal grandfather, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), whom she never met. "They are both geniuses who pushed the technological boundaries of cinema to explore the human heart and mind." On this December morning, the precisely choreographed publicity campaign took up an entire wing of Le Bristol Hotel, in the heart of Paris's luxury neighborhood, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
