Sir Ben Kingsley Biography

Actor. Born Krishna Bhanji, on December 31, 1943 in Snaiton, North Yorkshire, England. Raised in Salford, England, as the son of a Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a Kenyan-born physician of Indian extraction and Anna Lyna Mary Bhanji, an English-born fashion model, Kingsley began acting as a teenager. He took the name Ben as a tribute to his father, who had been called Ben in college. He joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and soon began performing in lead roles, including Demetrius in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a role which he reprised for a tour of U.S. cities in 1971, and the title role in Hamlet in 1975. Kingsley first appeared on the big screen in the Alistair MacLean thriller Fear is the Key (1972), and made his television debut that same year in the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) series The Love School.

From 1975 to 1977, Kingsley worked with the National Theatre; he subsequently returned to the RSC, where he originated the role of Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby. When the production traveled to Broadway, Kingsley was unable to reprise the role due to film commitments. His film career soared to unforeseen heights in 1981 with his first starring role, in the title role in Richard Attenborough's acclaimed biopic Gandhi. Appearing in only his second film, Kingsley won numerous accolades for his performance, including an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Kingsley appeared in seven more European films, notably a 1983 adaptation of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, costarring Jeremy Irons, and James Ivory's Maurice (1987), and made his Broadway debut in the one-man show Edmund Kean (1984), before making his U.S. film debut in Without a Clue (1988), playing the capable Dr. Watson to Michael Caine's bumbling Sherlock Holmes. The film was an unusually comic choice for Kingsley, and it met with mixed reviews. In 1989, he again ventured into historical biopic territory, earning critical praise for his performance in the title role of the HBO feature Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story, as the famed Holocaust survivor who steadfastly sought vengeance against the Nazis.

Kingsley earned his second Academy Award nomination for his sharp-edged supporting turn as Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky in the Warren Beatty vehicle Bugsy (1991). After a villainous performance in the thriller Sneakers (1992), costarring Robert Redford, he essayed a trio of more benevolent roles, including a patient coach to a chess prodigy in Searching for Bobby Fischer, a U.S. vice president in the comedy Dave, costarring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver, and Itshak Stern, the trusted friend of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed Holocaust epic Schindler's List (all 1993). This last performance garnered Kingsley his best reviews since Gandhi, and once again proved the actor's gift for portraying complicated characters of uncommon dignity and historical importance.