Background

Ethnicity: Kingsley's Kenyan-born father was of Gujarati Indian descent, and on Kingsley's mother's side, the actor may have German and Russian-Jewish roots, according to his family.

Ben Kingsley was born as Krishna Pandit Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Snainton, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He is a son of Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor, and Anna Lyna Mary (maiden name Goodman), an actress.

Education

Ben Kingsley was raised in Pendlebury, Lancashire. He studied at Manchester Grammar School alongside his future colleague, actor Robert Powell.

Kingsley pursued his education at De La Salle College or Pendleton Sixth Form College (a part of Salford City College group since 2009). While there, he often appeared in amateur theatrical productions.

Rejected by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art 1965, Ben Kingsley came back to London two years later on the invitation of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Kingsley received an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University of Salford.

Career

Ben Kingsley began his career as an actor in 1967 when he first appeared on the stage of the Aldwych Theatre. A year later, Kingsley was invited to the Royal Shakespeare Company as an assistant artist. It was with the company that he debuted on Broadway in 1971. He spent the rest of the decade acting in various stage productions, including Hamlet, Edmund Kean, and Othello.

Although Kingsley first appeared on the big screen in 1973 as Royale in Michael Tuchner's Fear is the Key, it was the lead in 1982 Gandhi that became breakout for him.

Throughout the 1980s, Kingsley continued with the roles in such projects as Betrayal, Turtle Diary, Pascali's Island, and Searching for Bobby Fischer of 1993. That same year, he incarnated Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant in Poland during the Second World War in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List.

The notable projects of the second half of the 1990s include Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden and a 1996 screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Richard E. Grant, and Nigel Hawthorne, and The Tale of Sweeney Todd. In 1998, Ben Kingsley presided the jury of the Berlin International Film Festival.

Kingsley continued to work actively on the screen, including TV series, as well as on stage, in the '00s. The beginning of the new millennium was marked by the next success, Sexy Beast, that brought the actor the third Academy Award nomination. The same was with the part of an immigrant from Iran in a 2003 House of Sand and Fog. Two years later, Kingsley collaborated again with Roman Polanski in his drama Oliver Twist followed by a crime comedy You Kill Me and a thriller Transsiberian.

During the 2010s, Kingsley regularly appeared on the screen and was involved in voice acting and dubbing as well. Shutter Island, Hugo, The Dictator opposite Sacha Baron Cohen, Iron Man 3, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Robert Zemeckis's The Walk are among the most remarkable movies in Kingsley's career of the time. In 2014, the actor gave his voice to a scrofulous cross-dressing pest exterminator from the animated movie The Boxtrolls and to the panther Bagheera in the fantasy adventure The Jungle Book based on Rudyard Kipling's eponymous collection of works.

Recently, Ben Kingsley has starred in Backstabbing for Beginners, Operation Finale, and Spider in the Web alongside Monica Bellucci.

Achievements

• 

  Ben Kingsley is an accomplished actor whose talent in performing and contributions to the cinema during his about fifty-year career have been marked by many awards and distinctions.
  
  He received one Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, both out of four nominations, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award. He also has an Indian highest civilian award Padma Shri to his credit.
  
  In 2002, Kingsley was named a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II. Kingsley's star was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

    (A rogue prince named Dastan reluctantly joins forces with...)

    2010
  • The Jungle Book

    (In Disney's live-action epic adventure directed by Jon Fa...)

    2016
  • Shutter Island

    (When United States Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at the a...)

    2010
  • Learning to Drive

    (Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson and Academy Award...)

    2014
  • Photographing Fairies

    (When a photographer travels to a remote English village t...)

    1997
  • Transsiberian

    (When an American couple encounters a pair of mysterious f...)

    2008
  • Gandhi

    (Sir Ben Kingsley stars as Mohandas Gandhi in Lord Richard...)

    1982
  • Dave

    (Just who runs this country anyway? Uncanny Presidential l...)

    1993
  • The Boxtrolls

    (From the creators of Coraline comes a fun adventure in ab...)

    2014
  • The Dictator

    (The creators and star of Borat bring you the hilarious co...)

    2012
  • Twelfth Night

    (One of William Shakespeare's most wild and raucous romant...)

    1996
  • Sexy Beast

    (A gangster's retirement is shattered by the arrival of hi...)

    2000
  • Death and the Maiden

    (A marriage becomes strained when the wife is confronted w...)

    1994
  • Elegy

    (Respected cultural critic and author David Kepesh is a mi...)

    2008
  • Self/less

    (A billionaire undergoes a procedure that transfers his co...)

    2015
  • The Walk

    (Philippe Petit & his recruits overcome long odds to conce...)

    2015
  • Hugo

    (Set in 1930s Paris, an orphan who lives in the walls of a...)

    2011
  • Religions of the World

    (Narrated by Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley, this serie...)

    2004
  • Bugsy

    (Warren Beatty and Annette Bening star in the incredible t...)

    1991
  • Sneakers

    (Complex thriller about computers and cryptography, govern...)

    1992
  • House of Sand and Fog

    (Massoud Amir Behrani has spent most of his savings trying...)

    2004
  • You Kill Me

    (A killer comedy about a hitman whose drinking problem is ...)

    2007
  • Lucky Number Slevin

    (A thriller that twists and turns its way through an under...)

    2006
  • Searching for Bobby Fischer

    (Josh Waitzkin is a typical seven-year-old who happens to ...)

    1993
  • Schindler's List

    (Steven Spielberg addresses the Holocaust in a profound Os...)

    1993
  • Iron Man 3

    (Marvel Studios unleashes the must-own, best Iron Man adve...)

    2013

Views

Quotations: "I don't honestly think people know what acting is."

"The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!"

"Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic."

"Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn't there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can't."

"People think if you play a man like Gandhi, somehow it rubs off on you. They were convinced I must have evolved spiritually when I did that film. I didn't. I worked my socks off, learned my lines, lost a lot a lot of weight and acquired probably the most eccentric set of mannerisms ever seen on screen. I had no time to evolve spiritually."

"In cinema, the leading player is the director."

"I always try to find something I admire about every character I play."

"Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence."

"It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity."

Membership

Ben Kingsley is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and of the British Academy of Film & Television Arts.

Personality

Ben Kingsley prepared seriously for his breakout role of Gandhi. Before the shoots, the actor practiced yoga and followed a vegetarian diet.

Interests

• music, mythology

Connections

Ben Kingsley was married to an actress Angela Morant from 1966 to 1976. She gave birth to Thomas Alexis and Jasmine Anna.

Two years after, the actor formed a family with theatrical director Alison Sutcliffe. The family produced two children, Edmund Kingsley and Ferdinand Kingsley. Both sons followed their father's steps and chose the careers of actors. Sutcliffe and Kingsley divorced in 1992.

Kingsley's third marriage with Alexandra Christmann took place in 2003. The couple broke up two years later.

In 2007, Ben Kingsley married another actress, Daniela Lavender from Brazilia.

Father:

Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji

Mother:

Anna Lyna Bhanji

ex-wife:

Alison Sutcliffe

Alison Sutcliffe is a prolific British theatre director. Until 2011, she was Artistic Director of The Bridge Project at the Bridge House Theatre, Warwick. She has worked internationally, most notably with the Royal Shakespeare Company and on Broadway.

ex-wife:

Angela Morant

Son:

Thomas Alexis Kingsley

Daughter:

Jasmine Anna Kingsley

Son:

Edmund Kingsley

Edmund Kingsley was born on July 5, 1982 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. He is an actor and producer, known for Capsule (2015), Stonehearst Asylum (2014) and Hugo (2011).

Son:

Ferdinand Kingsley

Ferdinand Kingsley was born in 1988 at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. He has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the National Theatre earning a nomination in 2010 for the Ian Charleson Award for his role as best newcomer as Rosencratz. He also appeared in the film 'The Last Legion' playing his father's character as a young man and on television in crime dramas 'Ripper Street' and 'Poirot'. He is also a music producer under the name of FK.

ex-wife:

Alexandra Christmann

Wife:

Daniela Lavender

Daniela Lavender, Lady Kingsley (born Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro; 14 December 1974) is a Brazilian actress, appearing on Brazilian television and on English-language television, film and stage, including touring with the British Shakespeare Company.

Friend:

David Lean

colleague:

Roman Polanski

colleague:

Steven Spielberg

colleague:

Martin Scorsese

colleague:

Ridley Scott

colleague:

Leonardo DiCaprio

colleague:

Rami Malek

colleague:

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt

colleague:

Penélope Cruz

References

• Ben Kingsley Inspirational Coloring Book Ben Kingsley Coloring book is the perfect way to unwind and relax for those who love pop cultureand mainstream sense of humor.
  2019