His real name is Krishna Bhanji. He was born on 31 December 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire. His Hindu father was a practicing physician, and his mother, an Englishwoman of Jewish-Russian descent, was an actress. The future actor spent his childhood and adolescence in Manchester, where he graduated from high school. At first, he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, but after seeing Ian Holm in Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at the age of nineteen, he decided
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His real name is Krishna Bhanji. He was born on 31 December 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire. His Hindu father was a practicing physician, and his mother, an Englishwoman of Jewish-Russian descent, was an actress. The future actor spent his childhood and adolescence in Manchester, where he graduated from high school. At first, he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, but after seeing Ian Holm in Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at the age of nineteen, he decided to become an actor. While working as a technician in a chemical laboratory, in his spare time Krishna began to perform as part of an amateur theater company. On the advice of his father, who believed that it would be easier for a novice actor to break through with an English name, he took the stage name Ben Kingsley. Then he worked at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, and in 1966 he starred in the popular British television series Coronation Street.
In 1967 he joined the troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Kingsley began with small roles, but soon became one of the leading actors, playing Oswald in King Lear, Amiens in As You Like It, Aeneas in Troil and Cressida, Conrad in Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio in Measure for Measure and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He worked with the famous theater director Trevor Nunn, and in 1971 he first performed on Broadway in the play Midsummer Night's Dream, staged by the no less famous Peter Brook. He also appeared in the National Theatre and other theater groups, but he always remained an actor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played until 1986. Among the numerous theatrical roles of Kingsley are Shakespeare's Hamlet (1975), Brutus (1979) and Othello (1985), Mosca in Ben Johnson's play Volpone (1977), Petya Trofimov in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard (1978), the legendary English actor Edmund Keane in the monoplay of the same name (1981-1984), with whom Kingsley performed not only in London, but also on Broadway. For several years, he only appeared on television. Nine years later, the actor played his first starring role in the biographical film Gandhi (1981, directed by Richard Attenborough). The actor carefully prepared for this role: in order to recreate the image of the political leader of the Indian people, Kingsley studied the biography, read the works of Gandhi and listened to the recordings of his speeches. For this picture, he was awarded an Oscar and two awards of the British Academy of Film and Television, one of which was awarded to the thirty-nine-year-old actor as the best newcomer. He then starred in adaptations of Harold Pinter's play Betrayal (1983, dir. David Jones) and The Turtle Diary (1985, dir. John Irvine) based on Russell Hoban's novella. Another success of Kingsley brought the role of misanthrope Silas Marner in the television film based on the novel of the same name by George Eliot (1985, dir.). Having an exotic appearance for the average Englishman, Kingsley easily played people of different nationalities: from the Arab Prince Selim in Harem (1985, directed by Arthur Joffe) to the Turkish spy in Pascali Island (1988, directed by James Durden). Having a reputation as a serious dramatic actor, he soon demonstrated another facet of his talent, playing in the comedy “No Evidence” (1988, dir. Tom Eberhardt) Dr. Watson, posing as the famous detective Sherlock Holmes provincial actor. The range of roles of Kingsley has always been very wide: the master of reincarnation, he played both the Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich in “Proof” (1987, dir. Tony Palmer), and the American mafia boss Meyer Lansky in “Bugsy” (1991, directed by Barry Levinson) and the philosophizing jester Feste in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (1996, directed by Trevor Nunn). For this role, he was nominated for the Oscar and the British Academy of Film and Television as the best supporting actor. He is also widely known for such roles as the Nazi criminal Dr. Roberto Miranda in the psychological drama Death and the Girl (1994, Roman Polansky), the killer hairdresser in The Legend of Sweeney Todd (1998, John Schlesinger) and the cruel and domineering London gangster Don Logan in the crime thriller Sexual Beast (2000, Jonathan Glaser). With all the variety of acting works of Kingsley, most of them are characterized by the desire to give the most vivid, clearly expressed psychological portrait of his hero.
In late 2001, Ben Kingsley was included in the award lists of Buckingham Palace, and in March of the following year Queen Elizabeth II awarded the actor the title of nobleman. In 2004, for his role as an Iranian immigrant, retired Colonel Massoud Amir Berani in the psychological drama House of Sand and Fog (2003), Vadim Perelman, he once again received an Oscar nomination. The actor continues to work quite intensively in the cinema, starring in both leading and supporting roles and only occasionally appears on the theater stage. Among the most famous roles of recent years - Fagin in the adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel "Oliver Twist" (2005, dir. Roman Polansky) and the leader of one of the New York criminal gangs nicknamed Rabbi in the crime thriller "Lucky number Slevin" (2006, dir. Paul McGuigan).
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