Michael Blake, who has written a trio of biographies of Chaney, described just a handful of the roles played by Chaney: "a Russian peasant, a tough Marine sergeant, a century-old mandarin and his grandson, a tragic clown, a shrewd police detective, a crippled magician, a legless criminal, five different Chinese roles, a deformed bell ringer, a mysterious phantom, a Swedish farmer who becomes senile, a blind pirate, a deranged surgeon and his botched experiment (a half man/half ape), a scheming country lawyer, a veteran train engineer...." To take on these roles, Chaney developed exceptional skills as a makeup artist, so much so that he was asked to write an entry on makeup for the 1923 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Chaney became one of Hollywood's most popular actors during the silent film era, eventually accumulating a total of 157 recorded film appearances between 1913 and 1930. In 1923, he starred in what would become one of his best-known films, a silent version of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. To play this role, Chaney endured incredible physical discomfort and often agonizing pain. He described the experience to Movie Magazine: "My body was strapped into a harness, which gave it the appearance of being stunted and deformed. I could work only a few hours a day, it hurt me so. I wore false teeth, which made it almost impossible for me to speak. Over one eye was a heavy lump of putty." The harness weighed 72 pounds; and the putty over his eye caused permanent blurring of his vision. In 1925, Chaney starred in a silent version of The Phantom of the Opera, once again playing a physically grotesque character at great cost to his own comfort. To play the title character (whose face was a "living death's-head," according to Michael Dempsey in Film Comment), Chaney reportedly inserted wires into his nostrils to make them point upward. Even though he is best remembered for these portrayals of characters with a horrible physical appearance, Chaney did not see them as monsters. As he told reporter Louella Parsons in one of his few interviews (in the New York Morning Telegraph), "I want always to create sympathy and in the end to win redemption. There would be no purpose in playing so hideous a character if in the end we could not feel the man had a soul and that he had been saved from utter degradation."

Died at Dawn of "Talkies"

As the 1920s came to a close, a revolution occurred in filmmaking: the birth of the "talkie." Many silent film stars were unable to make the transition to the talking film, either because their voices were unsuitable or they could not adapt their acting styles to the new format. Chaney decided to take the chance and starred in a talking film, a remake of his popular 1925 silent film, The Unholy Three. In this film Chaney (playing a criminal ventriloquist, Professor Echo) showed his adaptability by using several different voices, including the voice of an old woman. Chaney's career was suddenly cut short just as he was negotiating with his favorite director, Tod Browning, for the lead role in a sound version of Dracula, which could have been his greatest performance. On August 26, 1930, at the age of only 47, Chaney died in Los Angeles as the result of a throat hemorrhage from bronchial cancer, probably brought on by his heavy smoking habit.