Ben Kingsley

At 80 years old, Ben Kingsley has this physical status:

After graduating, in 1966, Kingsley was approached by music producer and manager Dick James. James, who was the publisher of The Beatles, offered to mould Kingsley into a pop star. Kingsley declined James' offer, and instead chose to join the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1967 after an audition before Trevor Nunn.

Devoting himself almost exclusively to stage work for the next 15 years, he made his West End debut for the company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1967 in a production of As You Like It. Further productions for the RSC included Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream (starring in Peter Brook's acclaimed 1970 RSC production as Demetrius), Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In the 1960s, Kingsley anglicised his name to Ben Kingsley, fearing that a foreign name would hamper his career. He told the Radio Times, "As soon as I changed my name, I got the jobs. I had one audition as Krishna Bhanji and they said, 'Beautiful audition but we don't quite know how to place you in our forthcoming season.' I changed my name, crossed the road, and they said when can you start?" Kingsley went on to play Mosca in Peter Hall's 1977 production of Ben Jonson's Volpone for the Royal National Theatre. He also starred in the role of Willy Loman in a 1982 Sydney production of Death of a Salesman opposite Mel Gibson.

Kingsley began his transition to film roles early on, starting with Fear Is the Key in 1972. Kingsley continued to play bit parts 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 historical drama The Love School and appeared in the TV miniseries Dickens of London the following year.

A turning point in Kingsley's career came with the biographical film Gandhi (1982), directed by Richard Attenborough, in which Kingsley played the titular role of Gandhi. The film was a critical and financial success, and Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance.

Throughout the 80s, Kingsley appeared in a variety of films, including supporting roles in Turtle Diary (1985) and Maurice (1987). He played the main character of Basil Pascali in Pascali's Island (1988), and went on to portray Dr. John Watson alongside Michael Caine's Sherlock Holmes in Without a Clue that year. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the organized crime figure Meyer Lansky in Bugsy (1991). Additional roles include the supporting character of Cosmo in the thriller film Sneakers (1992), Vice President Gary Nance in Dave (1993), and the chess teacher Bruce Pandolfini in Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993).

In Steven Spielberg's historical drama film Schindler's List (1993), Kingsley portrayed the Holocaust survivor Itzhak Stern alongside Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Kingsley received a nomination for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Further roles include the BBC adaptation of Silas Marner (1985) as the titular character. Kingsley starred alongside Sigourney Weaver in Death and the Maiden (1994), having previously acted with her in Dave.

In 1997, he provided a voice in the video game Ceremony of Innocence. In 1998, he was the head of the jury at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival and starred in the family film Spooky House, saying he had chosen a role in a lighter film after acting in roles that left him feeling traumatized.

Kingsley took on the role of Don Logan, a violent psychopath and recruiter for London's underworld, in Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast (2000), a psychological black comedy crime film. Kingsley's role as Logan earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. A year later, he won a Crystal Globe award for having an outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He earned another Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani in House of Sand and Fog (2003), and played a supporting role as Benjamin O'Ryan in Suspect Zero (2004). Although the film received negative reviews from critics, reservations were made for Kingsley's performance.

In July 2006, Kingsley received an Emmy nomination for his performance in the made-for-TV film Mrs. Harris, in which he played famed cardiologist Herman Tarnower, who was murdered by his jilted lover, Jean Harris. Later that year, he appeared in a cameo appearance in an episode of The Sopranos. The episode, titled "Luxury Lounge", features Kingsley playing himself; in the episode, Chris and Little Carmine pitch the role of a mob boss in the film Cleaver to Kingsley, which he turns down. In 2007, Kingsley appeared as a Polish American mobster in the Mafia comedy You Kill Me, and a hitman in War, Inc.

The years 2010 and 2011 contained several big roles for Kingsley. In 2010, he worked voicing a character named Sabine in the Lionhead Studios game Fable III and starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island (2010), directed by Martin Scorsese. That same year, Kingsley made his Bollywood debut in the thriller Teen Patti (2010). In 2011, he appeared in Scorsese's next film, Hugo (2011), playing the French illusionist Georges Méliès. Kingsley's portrayal of Méliès also earned him a Saturn Award for Best Actor. Kingsley also signed on to the sci-fi romance feature Broken Dream. The feature, by Neil Jordan and John Boorman, was later scrapped.

In 2013, Kingsley appeared as the villain Trevor Slattery in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 3, and as the hero Mazer Rackham in Ender's Game. A year later he played the Hebrew slave Nun in Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings and Merenkahre, a simulacrum of an Egyptian pharaoh and father of Ahkmenrah, in Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb That same year, Kingsley would also reprise his role as Slattery in the direct-to-video short film All Hail the King.

In 2015, Kingsley portrayed a Sikh driving instructor in the film Learning to Drive. He voiced Bagheera in the live-action adaptation of Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book (2016), a remake of the original 1967 film. Kingsley also recorded Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi in book-on-tape format. In 2018, he narrated Amazon Prime's documentary All or Nothing: Manchester City which followed Manchester City's record breaking 2017–18 Premier League campaign. and served as the voice of General Woundwort in the BBC adaptation of Watership Down. Kingsley reprised his role as Trevor Slattery in the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).

Kingsley will appear in Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023), a film adaptation of a short story by Roald Dahl, and will star opposite Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel and Benedict Cumberbatch.

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