Ben Whishaw
Ben Whishaw
Benjamin John "Ben" Whishawis an English actor. He is known for his stage role as Hamlet; his roles in the television series Nathan Barley, Criminal Justice, The Hour and London Spy; and film roles including Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, I'm Not There, Bright Star, Brideshead Revisited, Cloud Atlas, The Lobster, Suffragetteand The Danish Girl. He has also played the role of Q in the James Bond films starting with Skyfall, and was the voice of Paddington Bear in...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth14 October 1980
CityClifton, England
Keats himself spoke about how Shakespeare was capable of erasing himself completely from the characters he had created. As an actor, that is what I'm trying to do.
The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you're always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You're always protected.
When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way - they make you look at the world in a different way.
I don’t think that actors are necessarily any more uncomfortable in their skin than anyone else. I suppose I feel more comfortable in my skin now, but you’re always playing a character, aren’t you? You tell different versions of yourself to different people and vice versa. Here, or in the photo shoot or wherever, it’s a representation of you. It’s not you-you. That’s how you get through it.
I'd like to have a go at directing.
I'm not tortured and neurasthenic - I'm really not.
Even today, England is a very repressed, repressive country, and there's pressure to be kind of a certain way, so people do things that ultimately make them sad.
My # intuition comes up with better stuff than my head, I think.
When I finished my A-levels, I assumed I'd be able to get work as an actor. But I couldn't. I didn't get an audition. Nothing. So I thought I'd better train and then the parts would come.
I think being very thin has had a lot to do with how I've been cast.
I'm really hopeless with technology - I don't even have a computer.
The thing about acting is that it's fairly random. At the end of the day you take what drifts past you or what's given to you.
My favorite Bond films are the really early ones, the first ones in fact, like 'Dr. No' and 'From Russia with Love.'
It's fun to pretend you're good at something you know you wouldn't be good at in real life.