Ben Mendelsohn

Ben Mendelsohn (born 3 April 1969) is an Australian actor.

Early life

Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia. He attended Heidelberg Primary School and Banyule High School. His father, Frederick Mendelsohn, is a prominent medical researcher who heads the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne. Ben and his two brothers Tom and David as well as his mother, Carole (deceased), a registered nurse, lived in Europe and the US for long periods of time, and returned to Melbourne in high school. He took drama because he thought it was an easy class, and was the only one of his friends to follow up an audition for Crawford Productions which was being advertised.

Career

After several early television roles, including The Henderson Kids, he attracted notice in his breakout film, The Year My Voice Broke (1987), winning him the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Supporting Actor. His next major role was in The Big Steal, in 1990, playing Danny; this was followed in 1996 Idiot Box. In 2000 he was in two contrasting films, the Australian Mullet and the Hollywood Vertical Limit.

In 2005, he was preparing to play Mark Antony in the Sydney Theatre Company-produced Julius Caesar,^[1] and he is in the Terrence Malick-directed film The New World.

In 2007, Mendelsohn starred in the third season of the TV series Love My Way and in 2008, he appeared in Baz Luhrmann's Australia and filmed the 10-part Melbourne series Tangle, which is set to premiere on Showcase in 2009. In 2009, he appeared in the American science fiction film Knowing directed by Alex Proyas. The same year, Mendelsohn starred as Ned in Beautiful Kate, directed by Rachel Ward, opposite Bryan Brown and Rachel Griffiths.

Ancestry

In October 2009 Mendelsohn featured in the Australian series of Who Do You Think You Are? Searching for a connection to composer Felix Mendelssohn which was eventually dismissed, he discovered links to 19th century Prussia. His ancestors were amongst the first Prussian Jews to be naturalised in Schneidemühl in the province of Posen, now Piła in modern Poland.^[2]

Notes

References

• Romei, Stephen. (2005). "The Face: Stephen Romei meets Ben Mendelsohn (actor)". Review liftout, p. 3, The Weekend Australian, June 25–26, 2005

External links

• Ben Mendelsohn at the Internet Movie Database