1. Sir Ben Kingsley was born on Krishna Pandit Bhanji; 31 December 1943 and is an English actor.
41 Facts About Ben Kingsley
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Ben Kingsley has received accolades throughout his career spanning five decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards and two Laurence Olivier Awards.
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Ben Kingsley was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and received the Britannia Award in 2013.
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Ben Kingsley's starring roles included productions of As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
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In film, Ben Kingsley is known for his starring role as Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, for which he subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Actor and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
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Ben Kingsley played the character of Trevor Slattery in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Iron Man 3, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and the upcoming Disney+ series Wonder Man.
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Ben Kingsley acted in the blockbusters Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Ender's Game.
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Laurence Olivier Mahatma Gandhi Trevor Nunn Arthur Miller Willy Loman Mel Gibson Denholm Elliott Simon Callow Hugh Grant Sherlock Holmes Meyer Lansky Oskar Schindler Liam Neeson Sigourney Weaver Annette Bening Jean Harris Isabel Coixet Patricia Clarkson Peter Sarsgaard Dennis Hopper Christopher Walken Scarlett Johansson Lupita Nyong'o Bill Murray Idris Elba Daniela Lavender 8.
Ben Kingsley lent his voice to the films The Boxtrolls, and The Jungle Book.
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Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji on 31 December 1943, in Snainton, North Riding of Yorkshire.
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Ben Kingsley's mother, Anna Lyna Mary, was an English actress and model, and she later gave birth to a second son called Sadru Bhanji, who later worked as a psychiatrist in Devon.
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Ben Kingsley was born out of wedlock and "was loath to speak of her background".
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Ben Kingsley's father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was born in Zanzibar to a family originating from the Indian city of Jamnagar, of Khoja Gujarati descent.
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Ben Kingsley's paternal grandfather, Harji Bhanji, was a successful spice trader who had moved from India to the Sultanate of Zanzibar, where Ben Kingsley's father lived until moving to the United Kingdom at the age of 14.
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Ben Kingsley declined James' offer, and instead chose to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 after an audition before Trevor Nunn.
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Ben Kingsley played Mosca in Peter Hall's 1977 production of Ben Jonson's Volpone for the Royal National Theatre.
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Ben Kingsley played Willy Loman in a 1982 Sydney production of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman opposite Mel Gibson.
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Ben Kingsley began his transition to film roles early on, making his feature film debut playing a supporting role in the British action thriller Fear Is the Key in 1972.
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Ben Kingsley continued to play small 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.
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Ben Kingsley's performance is powerful without being loud or histrionic; he is almost always quiet, observant, and soft-spoken on the screen, and yet his performance comes across with such might that we realize, afterward, that the sheer moral force of Gandhi must have been behind the words.
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Ben Kingsley acted alongside Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, and Denholm Elliott.
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Ben Kingsley played the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich in Testimony, and the main character of Basil Pascali in Pascali's Island, and went on to portray Dr John Watson alongside Michael Caine's Sherlock Holmes in Without a Clue that year.
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Ben Kingsley was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the organised crime figure Meyer Lansky in Bugsy.
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In Steven Spielberg's historical drama film Schindler's List, Ben Kingsley portrayed the Holocaust survivor Itzhak Stern alongside Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler.
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The film was a critical and commercial success, and Ben Kingsley received a nomination for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
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Ben Kingsley starred alongside Sigourney Weaver in Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden, having previously acted with her in Dave.
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Laurence Olivier Mahatma Gandhi Trevor Nunn Arthur Miller Willy Loman Mel Gibson Denholm Elliott Simon Callow Hugh Grant Sherlock Holmes Meyer Lansky Oskar Schindler Liam Neeson Sigourney Weaver Annette Bening Jean Harris Isabel Coixet Patricia Clarkson Peter Sarsgaard Dennis Hopper Christopher Walken Scarlett Johansson Lupita Nyong'o Bill Murray Idris Elba Daniela Lavender 26.
In July 2006, Kingsley received an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination for his performance in the HBO television film Mrs Harris, in which he played famed cardiologist Herman Tarnower, who was murdered by his jilted lover, Jean Harris played by Annette Bening.
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Ben Kingsley plays himself in the episode as Chris and Little Carmine pitch him the role of a mob boss in the film Cleaver, which he turns down.
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In 2007, Ben Kingsley appeared as a Polish American mobster in the Mafia comedy You Kill Me, and a hitman in War, Inc The following year he acted in the romantic drama Elegy directed by Isabel Coixet.
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Ben Kingsley starred alongside Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson, and Dennis Hopper.
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That same year, Ben Kingsley made his Bollywood debut in the thriller Teen Patti.
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Ben Kingsley signed on to the sci-fi romance feature Broken Dream.
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In 2013, Ben Kingsley appeared as the villain Trevor Slattery in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 3 with Robert Downey Jr.
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In 2015, Ben Kingsley portrayed a Sikh driving instructor in the film Learning to Drive.
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Ben Kingsley voiced Bagheera in the live-action adaptation of Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, a remake of the original 1967 film shared cast with Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken.
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Ben Kingsley recorded Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi in book-on-tape format.
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Ben Kingsley reprised his role as Trevor Slattery in the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
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Ben Kingsley has been announced as playing Ibrahim Arif in the upcoming film of Richard Osman's multi-award-winning Thursday Murder Club series.
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Ben Kingsley divorced his third wife Alexandra Christmann in 2005, having been "deeply, deeply shocked" after pictures of her kissing another man surfaced on the internet.
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On 3 September 2007, Ben Kingsley married Brazilian actress Daniela Lavender at Eynsham Hall in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.
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In 1984, Ben Kingsley won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording for The Words of Gandhi, received an honorary degree from the University of Salford, and was awarded the Indian civilian honour Padma Shri.
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Ben Kingsley was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to the British film industry.