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Ben Kingsley extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Ben Kingsley
Kingsley at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Krishna Pandit Bhanji 31 December 1943 (1943-12-31) (age 66) Snainton, Scarborough, Yorkshire, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1966–present
Spouse(s)	Angela Morant (1966-1972) Alison Sutcliffe (1978-1992) Alexandra Christmann (2003-2005) Daniela Lavender (2007-)

Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji (Gujarati: ક્રિશ્ન પન્દિત્ ભઞિ); 31 December 1943) is an English actor. He has won Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Film and television career 3 Honours 4 Personal life 5 Selected filmography 6 References 7 External links

Early life

Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji¹ in Snainton, near Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, the son of Annalyna Mary (née Goodman), an actress and model, and Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor.²

Kingsley's father was born in Kenya of Indian Khoja Muslim Gujarati descent, as 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 14.³⁴⁵ Kingsley's mother, born out of wedlock, was "loath to speak of her background"; she was the daughter of an English East London garment worker mother and a father who was believed by the family to have been a Russian or German Jew.⁶⁷⁸⁹

Kingsley grew up in Pendlebury, near Salford, where he studied at University of Salford. He studied at Pendleton College, which later became home as the Ben Kingsley Theatre. Kingsley began his acting career on the stage at Manchester Grammar School, alongside Robert Powell, but made a transition to film roles early on.⁹ 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 Bhanji to Ben Kingsley, fearing that a foreign name would hamper his career.⁹¹⁰

Film and television career

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.⁹ The audience also agreed with the critics, and Gandhi was a box-office success. Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal.⁹

Kingsley has since appeared in a variety of roles. His credits included the films Turtle Diary, Maurice, Pascali's Island, Without a Clue (as Dr. Watson alongside Michael Caine's Sherlock Holmes), Suspect Zero, Bugsy, which led to an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Sneakers, Dave, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Schindler's List, Silas Marner, Death and the Maiden, Sexy Beast, for which he received another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and House of Sand and Fog, which led to yet another Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He won a Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2001.

In 1997, he provided voice talent for the video game Ceremony of Innocence. In July 2006, he 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, Kingsley appeared in an episode of The Sopranos entitled "Luxury Lounge", playing himself. In the show, Christopher Moltisanti and Carmine Lupertazzi offer him a role in the fictional slasher film "Cleaver", which he turns down. Lupertazzi offers him the role on the basis of Kingsley's real-life performance in Sexy Beast. In 2007, Kingsley appeared as a Polish American mobster in the Mafia comedy You Kill Me, and a Middle Eastern oil minister in War, Inc. Kingsley was asked to play Vulture in Spider-Man 3, but was cut out of the storyline.^{citation needed}

Kingsley announced SBK-Pictures is bringing the story of the Native American Conley Sisters to the big screen in Whispers Like Thunder. Kingsley will be playing the role of Charles Curtis, the first part-Native American to become vice-president of the United States.¹¹

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, his 58th birthday).¹² On promotional material for the 2006 film Lucky Number Slevin, Kingsley was referred to as "Sir Ben Kingsley." At first, the actor was singled out for some criticism, as such titles had generally come to be omitted from professional credits by that time.^{citation needed} It was claimed that the inclusion of "Sir" was a mistake by a studio executive.^{citation needed}

His demand to be called 'Sir' was documented by the BBC, to some criticism.¹³ Since then, Kingsley appears to have altered his stance; credits for his latest films refer to him only as 'Ben Kingsley'. Penelope Cruz was 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 rest of the shoot.¹⁴

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 1985.¹⁵

In addition, in 2008, Kingsley was awarded the "Cinema for Peace Honorary Award", for the portrayal of the humanitarian role-models Simon Wiesenthal, Itzhak Stern and Gandhi.

Personal life

Kingsley has been married four times and has four children. Thomas Bhanji and artist Jasmin Bhanji are his children with actress Angela Morant; Edmund Kingsley and Ferdinand Kingsley, both of whom became actors, with theatrical director Alison Sutcliffe. In 2005 he divorced German-born Alexandra Christmann, after pictures of her kissing another lover surfaced on the internet.¹⁶ The actor was "deeply, deeply shocked" that his wife was seen kissing a man in a nightclub.¹⁶ On 3 September 2007, Kingsley married Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro, a Brazilian actress, in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.¹⁷

He currently lives in Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, England, where he has lived for over ten years.¹⁸

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1982	Gandhi	Mohandas Gandhi	Academy Award for Best Actor
1983	Betrayal	Robert	the film version of Harold Pinter's play
1985	Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe	Silas Marner
	Harem	Selim
1986	Turtle Diary	William Snow	screenplay by Harold Pinter
1987	The Secret of the Sahara (TV)	Sholomon
	Maurice	Lasker-Jones
1988	Pascali's Island	Basil Pascali
	Without a Clue	Dr. John Watson
	Testimony - The Story of Shostakovich	Dmitri Shostakovich
1989	Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story	Simon Wiesenthal
1990	The 5th Monkey	Cunda
1991	Bugsy	Meyer Lansky	Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor
1992	Sneakers	Cosmo
	Freddie as F.R.O.7	Freddie The Frog	Voice
1993	Searching for Bobby Fischer	Bruce Pandolfini
	Dave	Vice President Gary Nance
	Schindler's List	Itzhak Stern
1994	Death and the Maiden	Dr. Roberto Miranda
1995	Species	Xavier Fitch
	Joseph	Potiphar
	Moses	Moses
1996	Twelfth Night	Feste	from the play by William Shakespeare
1997	Weapons of Mass Distraction (TV)	Julian Messenger
	The Assignment	Amos
1998	The Tale of Sweeney Todd (TV)	Sweeney Todd	Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Actor
1999	Alice in Wonderland (TV)	Major Caterpillar
	The Confession	Harry Fertig
2000	What Planet Are YOU From?	Graydon
	Rules of Engagement	Ambassador Mourain
	Islam: Empire of Faith	Narrator	voice only
2001	Anne Frank: The Whole Story	Otto Frank	Won Screen Actor's Guild Award
	Sexy Beast	Don Logan	Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor
	AI: Artificial Intelligence	Specialist	voice
2002	The Triumph of Love	Hermocrates	Marivaux's play
	Tuck Everlasting	Man in the Yellow Suit
2003	House of Sand and Fog	Massoud Behrani	Academy Award nomination for Best Actor
2004	Thunderbirds	"The Hood"	loosely based on the super-marionation programme created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson
	Suspect Zero	Benjamin O'Ryan
2005	A Sound of Thunder	Charles Hatton
	Oliver Twist	Fagin
	Mrs. Harris	Herman Tarnower
	BloodRayne	Kagan
2006	The Sopranos (TV)	Appearance as himself	Season 6, Episode 72 - "Luxury Lounge"
	Lucky Number Slevin	The Rabbi
2007	You Kill Me	Frank Falenczyk
	The Last Legion	Ambrosinus
	The Ten Commandments	Narrator (voice)
2008	Elegy	David Kepesh
	War, Inc.	Walken
	The Love Guru	Guru Tugginmypudha
	The Wackness	Dr. Squires
	Transsiberian	Grinko
	China's Stolen Children	Narrator (voice)
	Fifty Dead Men Walking	Fergus
2009	Noah's Ark: The New Beginning	Narrator (voice)	post-production
	Whispers Like Thunder19	Vice President Charles Curtis	pre-production
	Teen Patti	Perci Trachtenberg	post-production
	Journey to Mecca	Narrator (voice)
2010	Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time20	Nizam	post-production
	Shutter Island	Dr. John Cawley	post-production
2011	Taj21	Shah Jahan	pre-production

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ben Kingsley

• Ben Kingsley at the Internet Movie Database
• Ben Kingsley at TV.com
• Ben Kingsley's SBK announces slate, By TATIANA SIEGEL, Mon., Nov. 17, 2008
• Interview, 9/27/05, Cinema Confidential
• Interview, 9/22/05, Dark Horizons
• Interview, 7/28/04, IGN Films
• Interview, 12/16/93, Charlie Rose (Kingsley talks about his experience making "Schindler's List" with director Steven Spielberg).

Awards for Ben Kingsley v • d • e Academy Award for Best Actor Henry Fonda (1981) · Ben Kingsley (1982) · Robert Duvall (1983) · F. Murray Abraham (1984) · William Hurt (1985) · Paul Newman (1986) · Michael Douglas (1987) · Dustin Hoffman (1988) · Daniel Day-Lewis (1989) · Jeremy Irons (1990) · Anthony Hopkins (1991) · Al Pacino (1992) · Tom Hanks (1993)  · Tom Hanks (1994) · Nicolas Cage (1995) · Geoffrey Rush (1996) · Jack Nicholson (1997) · Roberto Benigni (1998) · Kevin Spacey (1999) · Russell Crowe (2000) Complete List · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present) v • d • e Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama Henry Fonda (1981) · Ben Kingsley (1982) · Robert Duvall (1983) · F. Murray Abraham (1984) · Jon Voight (1985) · Bob Hoskins (1986) · Michael Douglas (1987) · Dustin Hoffman (1988) · Tom Cruise (1989) · Jeremy Irons (1990) · Nick Nolte (1991) · Al Pacino (1992) · Tom Hanks (1993) · Tom Hanks (1994) · Nicolas Cage (1995) · Geoffrey Rush (1996) · Peter Fonda (1997) · Jim Carrey (1998) · Denzel Washington (1999) · Tom Hanks (2000) Complete List · (1943–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present) v • d • e Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie Raúl Juliá (1994) · Gary Sinise (1995) · Alan Rickman (1996) · Gary Sinise (1997) · Christopher Reeve (1998) · Jack Lemmon (1999) · Brian Dennehy (2000) · Ben Kingsley (2001) · William H. Macy (2002) · Al Pacino (2003) · Geoffrey Rush (2004) · Paul Newman (2005) · Jeremy Irons (2006) · Kevin Kline (2007) · Paul Giamatti (2008) · Kevin Bacon (2009)

Persondata
NAME	Kingsley, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bhanji, Krishna
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	31 December 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	Scarborough, Yorkshire, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH