One of England's most respected stage actors, Ben Kingsley became internationally famous after his Oscar-winning performance as Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi. Kingsley's was accepted as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and throughout the '60s and '70s he performed on stage and in television programs, usually in productions of William Shakespeare and Harold Pinter plays. Since Gandhi he has played a number of supporting and lead roles in the movies, in addition to numerous stage productions in England and the U.S. (including Edmund Kean in 1983). Kingsley's other Oscar nominations include for Bugsy (1991, starring Warren Beatty), Sexy Beast (2000) and The House of Sand and Fog (2003, co-starring Jennifer Connelly). His other movies include Sneakers (1992, with Robert Redford, Death And The Maiden (1994, with Sigourney Weaver) and Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist (2005).
"Every time we got something into the camera it was as if we were saying to the 6 million ghosts -- with a wry smile on our faces, and a sense of accomplishment -- That's for you! [On shooting Schindler's List]"
Chameleon-like British actor Ben Kingsley has proven he can play just about anyone, from Nazi war criminals to Jewish Holocaust survivors to quiet British bookshop owners. For many viewers, however, he will always be inextricably linked with his title role in Gandhi, a film that won him an Oscar and the undying respect of critics and filmgoers alike.
Of English, East Indian, and South African descent, Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Snaiton, Yorkshire, England. The son of a general practitioner, Kingsley started out in amateur theatricals in Manchester before making his professional debut at age 23. In 1967 he made his first London appearance at the Aldwych theater and then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, devoting himself almost exclusively to stage work for the next 15 years (with the exception of two obscure films, Fear Is the Key [1972] and Hard Labour [1973]). When asked about his favorite stage roles, he listed Hamlet, The Tempest's Ariel, and Volpone's Mosca.
American audiences first saw Kingsley in 1971, when he made his Broadway debut with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1982, actor and director Richard Attenborough selected Kingsley for the demanding title role in the epic Gandhi. The film swept the international awards that year, earning the 39-year-old actor overnight success. Among the several awards he was honored with, Kingsley won a Best Actor Oscar. Adamantly refusing to recycle the same roles, Kingsley spent the next decade playing a wide spectrum of characters. Among his more notable parts were an Arab potentate in Harem (1985), an introverted bibliophile and "social rebel" in Turtle Diary (also 1985), a spy of little import in Pascali's Island (1988), an incorruptible American vice president in Dave (1992), New York gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugsy (1992), a Jewish bookkeeper in Schindler's List (1993), and a suspected Nazi war criminal in Death and the Maiden (1994). So many of his characters have been either taciturn or downright villainous that, upon being cast in a good-guy role in the escapist sci-fier Species (1995), Kingsley publicly expressed his relief in several widely circulated magazine articles.
In the latter half of the 1990s, Kingsley continued to embrace a variety of eclectic roles, with turns as the Fool in Trevor Nunn's 1996 film adaptation of Twelfth Night, a media mogul in the 1997 made-for-HBO satire Weapons of Mass Distraction, and the barbarous barber Sweeney Todd in John Schlesinger's 1998 The Tale of Sweeney Todd. Kingsley also took Broadway by storm with his one-man show Edward Kean (later taped for cable), which was directed by his wife, Alison Sutcliffe.
Though Kingsley had retained the variety in his career that he had so diligently pursued, the ever-sharp actor remained as focused as ever heading into the new millennium. For his role as a manipulative criminal with a strong power for persuasion in Sexy Beast (2001), Kingsley earned both a Golden Globe nomination and a third Oscar nomination. His fourth Academy nod would come just 2 years later with his role as a proud Arab-American patriarch in The House of Sand and Fog. Along with the Best Actor Oscar nomination, the role also netted Kingsley Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild nominations. Kingsley lost his Oscar bid for House to Sean Penn, who collected the statue for his contribution to Clint Eastwood's Mystic River.
Over the next several years, Sir Ben Kingsley's acting choices often demonstrated the degree of difficulty that A-listers may encounter when seeking multilayered roles in respectable films, with solid scripts and direction; like many of his contemporaries, the magnificent thespian Kingsley turned up in more than one schlocky Hollywood stinker after House of Sand and Fog -- from Jonathan Frakes's ugly Thunderbirds revamp (2004) to Uwe Boll's horrendous, gothic fx-extravaganza BloodRayne (2006) (as evil ruler Lord Kagan). If anyone could ferret out the creme-de-la-creme of roles, however, Kingsley could, and he simultaneously proved it with contributions to the interesting 2005 biopic Mrs. Harris (as the ill-fated Scarsdale Diet Doctor) and the wondrous documentary I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Rosenthal (2007).
2007 marked a banner year for Kingsley - his most active in quite some time, with contributions to no less than seven key pictures. In the most prominent, the John Dahl-directed crime comedy You Kill Me, Kingsley plays Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic hit man who travels to Los Angeles to dry out, takes a job in a morgue, and strikes up a relationship with a relative of one of his victims. That same year, Kingsley re-projected his innate ability to essay ethnic roles convincingly, with his turn as one of two Russian police offers investigating an espionage case on a train, in Brad Anderson's thriller Trans-Siberian.
Later that same year, Kingsley appeared opposite lead Dan Fogler in English director Chase Palmer's Number Thirteen - a period drama about Alfred Hitchcock's ill-fated attempt to realize one of his first movie projects. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji in Snainton, North Yorkshire, England, the son of Anna Lyna Mary (née Goodman), an actress and model, and Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor.[2]
Kingsley's father, born in Kenya, is of GujaratiIndian descent; Kingsley's paternal grandfather was a spice trader who had moved from India to Zanzibar, where Kingsley's father lived until moving to England at the age of 14.[3][4][5] Kingsley's mother, born out of wedlock, was "loath to speak of her background". Kingsley's maternal grandfather was believed by the family to have been a Russian or German Jew, while his maternal grandmother was English and worked in the garment district of East London.[6][7][8]
Kingsley began his acting career on stage, but made a transition to film roles early on. Despite this focus on film, he continued to act on the stage, playing Mosca in Peter Hall's 1977 production of Ben Jonson's Volpone for the Royal National Theatre, and in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At about this time, he changed his name from Krishna Pandit Bhanji to Ben Kingsley, fearing that a foreign name would hamper his career;[10][11] he took his stage surname from his paternal grandfather's nickname, "King Clove".[8]
Kingsley's first film role was a supporting turn in Fear Is the Key, released in 1972. Kingsley continued starring in bit roles in both film and television, including a role as Ron Jenkins on the soap opera Coronation Street from 1966 to 1967 and regular appearances as a defence counsel in the long-running British legal programme Crown Court. In 1975, he starred as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the BBCs historical drama The Love School. He found fame only years later, starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi in 1982, his best-known role to date.[10] The audience agreed with the critics, and Gandhi was a box-office success. Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal.[10][12][13]
Kingsley's SBK-Pictures has been planning to bring the story of the Native American Conley sisters to the big screen in Whispers Like Thunder, with Kingsley playing the role of Charles Curtis, the first part-Native American to become vice-president of the United States.[16]
Honours
Kingsley was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000. He was made a knight bachelor in the 2002 New Year's Honours (the award was announced on 31 December 2001, which happened to be Kingsley's 58th birthday).[17] His demand to be called 'Sir' was documented by the BBC, to some criticism.[18] Since then, Kingsley appears to have altered his stance; credits for his latest films refer to him as Ben Kingsley. Co-star Penelope Cruz was reportedly unsure what to call him during the filming of Elegy as someone had told her she needed to refer to him as "Sir Ben". One day it slipped out as such, and she called him that for the remainder of the shoot.[19]
In 1984, he won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording for The Words of Gandhi. He was awarded the Indian civilian honor Padma Shri in 1984.[20]
Kingsley has been married four times and has four children: Thomas Bhanji and artist Jasmin Bhanji, with actress Angela Morant, and Edmund Kingsley and Ferdinand Kingsley, both of whom became actors, with theatrical director Alison Sutcliffe. In 2005, he divorced German-born Alexandra Christmann, having been "deeply, deeply shocked" after pictures of her kissing another man surfaced on the internet.[22] On 3 September 2007, Kingsley married Daniela Lavender, a Brazilian actress, in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.[23]
He currently lives in Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, England, where he has resided for more than ten years.[24]
^Krieger, Hilary Leila (10 April 2005). "'Gandhi' brings his 'truth-force' to Palestinian audiences". The Jerusalem Post. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-107274645.html. Retrieved 9 December 2007.: "The grandmother of the knighted Royal Shakespeare Company alum spoke Yiddish she picked up while a garment worker in London's East End a century ago. "She was violently opposed to talking about this, so my poor mother was at the receiving end of a rage attack every time my grandmother was asked about her husband, her lover, whoever it was, but it's believed that he was a Russian Jew or a German Jew called Goodman", Kingsley told The Jerusalem Post".
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