Kingsley stars in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time, a film from Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry
Bruckheimer Films that hits U.S. theaters on May 28th. Kingsley was
recently seen starring in Martin Scorsese’s 1950s drama Shutter Island,
with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Michelle Williams. He will next
be working on another Scorsese film, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
He recently was the star of the sexually-charged Elegy opposite
Penelope Cruz and directed by Isabel Coixet and for which he was
nominated British Actor of the Year by the London Critics Circle Film
Awards. He starred in two films at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival that
give further perspective to his work: The Audience Award-winning and
Grand Jury Prize- nominated The Wackness, in which he plays a
drug-addled psychiatrist opposite Josh Peck, Famke Janssen, Olivia
Thirlby and Mary-Kate Olsen; and the crime thriller Transsiberian, as a
mysterious traveler opposite Woody Harrelson. He also starred in 50 Dead
Men, a thriller set against the dangerous backdrop of 1980s Ireland,
and the more lighthearted crime comedy War, Inc. opposite John Cusack.
Steeped in British theatre, Kingsley marked the beginning of his
professional acting career with his acceptance by the Royal Shakespeare
Company in l967. From roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest,
Brutus in Julius Caesar and the title roles in Othello and Hamlet, among
others, his more recent and diverse stage roles include those in The
Country Wife, The Cherry Orchard, A Betrothal and Waiting for Godot.
Kingsley’s film career began in l972 with the thriller Fear Is the
Key, but his first major role came a decade later in the epic Gandhi,
directed by Richard Attenborough. He followed this Oscar-winning
performance with such early films as Betrayal, Turtle Diary, Harem,
Pascali’s Island, Without A Clue (as Dr. Watson to Michael Caine’s
Sherlock Holmes) and The Children opposite Kim Novak. During the ‘90s
Kingsley distinguished himself through such roles as Mayer Lansky in
Bugsy, Sneakers, Searching For Bobby Fischer and Dave. In 1994 he was
nominated for a BAFTA Award for his memorable supporting role as Itzhak
Stern in Steven Spielberg’s seven-time Oscar winner Schindler’s List.
During the past decade, Ben Kingsley has remained a coveted and
ubiquitous talent. Beginning with such films as Rules of Engagement,
What Planet Are You From? and an Oscar-nominated role as a brutal
gangster in Sexy Beast, he received his most recent Oscar nomination in
2004 for his performance as a proud Iranian emigrant in the
highly-acclaimed House of Sand and Fog. Among his films in the last
several years are Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, the crime drama Lucky
Number Slevin, John Dahl’s You Kill Me and the Roman empire saga The
Last Legion. (photo © 2010 Joe Martinez/PictureLux)
View more celebrity photos of Ben Kingsley at PictureLux Imagesearch
