Sacha Baron Cohen usually tricks celebrities on a one-on-one basis, but in 2013 he raised the bar by pranking an entire audience full of Hollywood stars at the Britannia Awards. It all started with Salma Hayek taking to the stage, accompanied by an elderly woman in a wheelchair, to present Cohen the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy. That woman, declares Hayek, was Grace Cullington, who was just five when she worked with Chaplin in his 1931 film City Lights. (Or was she?)
Cullington presents Cohen with "Charlie's actual cane from City Lights," leading him to mime a bit of Chaplin's Little Tramp character. When he leans on the cane, however, it snaps in two, sending him stumbling into Cullington and hurling her wheelchair off the stage. Cohen leaps down to see if she's okay, attempting to give her mouth-to-mouth until giving up and returning to the stage.
Anyone who hadn't figured out they'd been played were clued in by his opening remarks. "Grace Cullington is the oldest... um, sorry, was the oldest..." he says, as a member of the security team picks up Cullington's motionless body, throws it over his shoulder and walks off. As you've probably deduced, "Cullington" was in on it. As the Los Angeles Times reported, "The senior citizen was actually a stuntwoman, and the only Cullington from the silent era was Margaret Cullington, who had a small part in Chaplin's 'A Dog's Life.'"
