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
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 love taking on other people's words. They are much more interesting to me than my own.
I love films. I love music. I love poetry and stories. All of that I feel... I sort of get very excited and fed by.
The thing I love most about acting is that your capacity evolves as you evolve as a human being.
I'd like to have a go at directing.
I'm not tortured and neurasthenic - I'm really not.
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.
I love the characters I've had the opportunity to play.
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.
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.
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.