Birthdate: Oct 14, 1980
Birthplace: Clifton, Bedfordshire, England, UK
Ben Whishaw (birthname: Benjamin John Whishaw) is one of the leading British actors of his generation and has managed to appear in openly gay roles as well as leading roles in family-oriented movies including as the voice of the beloved Paddington Bear in the Paddington movie series. Whishaw made his feature film debut in his late teens in director/writer William Boyd’s WWI drama, The Trench (1999), starring a who’s who of then-upcoming young British actors including Paul Nicholls, Daniel Craig, James D’Arcy, and Cillian Murphy.
Whishaw appeared in a handful of small British indie features and shorts until landing a supporting role in British filmmaker Roger Michell’s adaptation (with screenwriter Joe Penhall) of Ian McEwan’s 1997 novel, Enduring Love (2004), starring Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch and Corin Redgrave, and premiering at the Telluride Film Festival. Whishaw appeared in his third feature alongside star Craig in debuting director Matthew Vaughn’s crime drama, Layer Cake (2004), with Tom Hardy, Michael Gambon, Colm Meaney, and Sienna Miller, and grossing $12 million for Columbia Pictures/Columbia TriStar Films.
Ben Whishaw portrayed Keith Richards in Stoned (2005), the Stephen Wooley-directed biopic of the late, lamented Rolling Stone bandmate and creative force, Brian Jones (played by Leo Gregory), with Paddy Considine, David Morrissey, Luke de Woolfson, Tuva Novotny and Monet Mazur, and released by Screen Media Films (U.S.)/Vertigo Films (U.K.). Whishaw had his first feature starring role as the olfactory 18th-century killer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in director/co-writer (with Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger) Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of Patrick Süskind’s best-selling 1985 novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), co-starring Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood and Dustin Hoffman, and released by DreamWorks Pictures/Paramount Pictures in the U.S., delivering a good $135 million.
Whishaw portrayed his second iconic 1960s rock legend as Bob Dylan in director/co-writer (with Oren Moverman) Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007), co-starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger—all playing versions of Dylan, and premiering at the Venice Film Festival before a release by The Weinstein Company. Whishaw co-starred in the feature version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (2008), with Matthew Goode, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, and Greta Scacchi, and backed by Miramax Films/BBC Films/Buena Vista International.
Ben Whishaw reunited with director Tom Tykwer for the thriller, The International (2009), starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armie Mueller-Stahl, and Brian F. O’Byrne, and earning $60 million for Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing. Whishaw then portrayed poet John Keats in director/writer Jane Campion’s film portrait of Keats’s final three years, Bright Star (2009), co-starring Abbie Cornish, with Paul Schneider and Kerry Fox, and after premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival was released by Warner Bros.
Another major woman filmmaker cast Whishaw—Julie Taymor—for the role of the spirit Ariel in her gender-switching movie version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (2010), starring Helen Mirren as Prospera, Duchess of Milan, Djimon Hounsou, Felicity Jones, David Strathairn, Tom Conti, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, and Alfred Molina, and released by Touchstone Pictures/Disney.
Whishaw landed the iconic role of Q in Sam Mendes’ superb Bond movie, Skyfall (2012), starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Albert Finney and earning a knockout $1.1 billion for MGM/Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing; Whishaw played Q again in Mendes’s acclaimed Bond movie, Spectre (2015), with new cast members Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Dave Bautista and Monica Bellucci, earning $881 million; and then Whishaw returned as Q in Daniel Craig’s finale as Bond, No Time to Die (2021), with new director/co-writer Cary Jodi Fukunaga and new cast members Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, and Jeffrey Wright, grossing $774 million.
Ben Whishaw took on multiple roles in the ambitious but poorly received big-screen version of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2012), marking Whishaw’s third project with director/writer/producer Tom Tykwer and first with co-directors/writers/producers Lana and Lilly Wachowski, starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Keith David, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and which was released to a low $130.5 million (against $147 million costs) by Warner Bros./Focus Features after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival.
Whishaw joined another major signature filmmaker—Terry Gilliam—for his sci-fi movie, The Zero Theorem (2013), starring Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Lucas Hedges, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Peter Stormare, Matt Damon, and Tilda Swinton and released by Stage 6 Films. Whishaw was part of the ensemble of director/writer Christian Camargo’s free version of Chekhov’s The Seagull, Days and Nights (2013), with Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Allison Janney, Cherry Jones, Jean Reno, Russell Means, Juliet Rylance, and Mark Rylance, and which was released by IFC Films.
Ben Whishaw took on one of his first gay roles in Cambodian-born and British-based director/writer Hong Khaou’s LGTBQ+ romantic drama, Lilting (2014), co-starring Cheng Pei-pei, Andrew Leung, Naomi Christie, and Peter Bowles, and which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before a release by Artificial Eye. Whishaw became the voice of (plus performing motion capture for) the beloved Paddington Bear for the highly successful ($700 million-and-counting) Paddington movie series, starting with Paddington (2014), followed by Paddington 2 (2017) and Paddington in Peru (2024), produced by StudioCanal/Columbia Pictures/Stage 6 Films and released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Releasing.
Whishaw was cast by director/co-writer/co-producer Yorgos Lanthimos for his stark black comedy, The Lobster (2015), starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, Jessica Barden, John C. Reilly and Lea Seydoux, and which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and released Stateside by A24, grossing over $18 million. Whishaw joined Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, and Meryl Streep for the British feminist drama, Suffragette (2015), directed by Sarah Gavron, and released by 20th Century Fox after premiering at the Telluride Film Festival.
Ben Whishaw co-starred with Oscar-nominated Eddie Redmayne and Oscar-winning Alicia Vikander in the Tom Hooper-directed trans historical drama based on David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel, The Danish Girl (2015), with Sebastian Koch, Amber Heard, and Matthias Schoenaerts, and returning a fine $64 million for Focus Features/Universal Pictures. Whishaw portrayed his second literary hero as Herman Melville in director/producer Ron Howard’s whaling adventure-drama, In the Heart of the Sea (2015), based on Nicholas Philbrick’s book based on incidents which partly inspired Melville’s Moby Dick and co-starred Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland and Brendan Gleeson, but which lost money for Warner Bros. ($94 million gross against $100 million costs).
Whishaw again reunited with director/writer Tom Tykwer and star Tom Hanks for another literary film adaptation—this time of Dave Eggers’s novel, A Hologram for the King (2016), with Omar Elba, Sarina Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Tom Skerritt, and released by Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions/Saban Films after premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival. Whishaw took on the charming role of Mr. Banks in the fine Disney sequel, Mary Poppins Returns (2018), starring Emily Blunt in the title role with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emily Mortimer, Julie Waters, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, and David Warner, under Rob Marshall’s direction and released to a good return of $349.5 million.
Ben Whishaw took on one of his most interesting roles in Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner’s surreal drama, Little Joe (2019), with Emily Beecham, Kerry Fox, Kit Connor, and David Wilmot, and which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival before its theatrical release via Magnolia Pictures (US)/X Verleih AG (Germany)/Filmladen (Austria)/BFI Distribution (UK). Whishaw then portrayed Uriah Heep in director/co-writer/producer Armando Iannucci’s fanciful adaptation of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019), based on Charles Dickens’s novel, starring Dev Patel, Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Hugh Laurie, and Tilda Swinton, and distributed by Searchlight Pictures/Lionsgate after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.
Whishaw starred in director/co-writer Aneil Karia’s little-seen BBC Films/BFI-backed psychological drama, Surge (2020), and then Whishaw had the only male role in director/writer Sarah Polley’s film version of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel, Women Talking (2022), with the ensemble of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey and Frances McDormand (who also produced), and which marked the last movie released by United Artists Releasing after premiering at the Telluride Film Festival.
Whishaw went from appearing with Jennifer Connelly in New Zealand director/writer/co-star Alice Englert’s black comedy, Bad Behaviour (2023) to co-starring as a part of an unusual love triangle with co-stars Franz Rogowski and Adele Exarchopoulos in Ira Sachs’ rollicking comedy-drama, Passages (2023), premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and released by SBS Distribution.
Ben Whishaw portrayed Russian dissident writer/politician Eduard Limonov in the Kirill Serebrennikov-directed biopic, Limonov: The Ballad (2024), a French/Italian/Spanish co-production which was selected for the Palme d’Or competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and then Whishaw reunited with filmmaker Ira Sachs as the title character in the biopic of the photographer, Peter Hujar’s Diary (2025), co-starring Rebecca Hall and released by Janus Films/Sideshow after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
Ben Whishaw was born in Clifton, England, in the county of Bedfordshire, and was raised in Clifton and nearby Langford by parents Jose (IT specialist, youth sports coach) and Linda Whishaw (cosmetologist). Whishaw has a twin brother, James. Whishaw attended and graduated from both Henlow Middle School and Samuel Whitbread Community College, where he was a theater major and at the same time was a member of the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre at Hitchin’s Queen Mother Theatre. Whishaw attended and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 2004, the same year director Trevor Nunn cast him as one of the youngest Hamlets in British theater history. Whishaw’s height is 5’ 9”. Whishaw was in a civil partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw from 2012 to 2022; the couple is separated. Whishaw’s estimated net worth is $2 million.
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Raves: Ben Whishaw’s London theater debut is the stuff of legend: Director Trevor Nunn cast him as Hamlet, and London critics were so enthusiastic about his performance that Whishaw was labeled “the next Olivier.”
Anonymity: Whishaw has expressed a desire to be as anonymous an actor as possible, noting “As an actor you have total rights to privacy and mystery, whatever your sexuality, whatever you do. I don’t see why that has to be something you discuss openly because you do something in the public eye. I have no understanding of why we turn actors into celebrities.”
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