Benjamin John Whishaw (born 14 October 1980) is an English actor and producer. After winning a British Independent Film Award for his performance in My Brother Tom (2001), he was nominated for an Olivier Award for his portrayal of the title role in a 2004 production of Hamlet. This was followed by television roles in Nathan Barley (2005), Criminal Justice (2008) and The Hour (2011–12) and film roles in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), I'm Not There (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008), and Bright Star (2009). For Criminal Justice, Whishaw received an International Emmy Award and received his first BAFTA Award nomination.
In 2012, Whishaw played the title role in a BBC Two adaptation of Richard II, broadcast as part of The Hollow Crown series of William Shakespeare adaptations, for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. The same year, he appeared as Q in the James Bond film Skyfall (2012), going on to reprise the role in Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021). He has voiced Paddington Bear in Paddington (2014), its sequel Paddington 2 (2017) and the follow-up television series. His other film roles in the 2010s have included Cloud Atlas (2012), The Lobster (2015), Suffragette (2015), The Danish Girl (2015), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). In 2020, he had a leading role as Patrick "Rabbi" Milligan in the fourth season of the black comedy crime drama Fargo. In 2022, he starred in the BBC medical drama series This Is Going to Hurt.
Whishaw received a third BAFTA Award nomination for the leading role in London Spy (2015) and, for his portrayal of Norman Scott in the miniseries A Very English Scandal (2018), won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Early life :
Whishaw was born on 14 October 1980 in Clifton, Bedfordshire, and was brought up there and in neighbouring Langford. He is the son of Linda (née Hope), who works in cosmetics, and Jose Whishaw who works in sports with young people. He has a fraternal twin, James.
His mother is of English ancestry, while his father is of French, German and Russian descent. The family's original surname was not Whishaw but Stellmacher, a German occupational name for a wheelwright. Whishaw's paternal grandfather, born Jean Vladimir Stellmacher and living in Kassel, Germany changed his name to John Victor Whishaw after World War II during which he served as a British spy in the German army. He was born in Istanbul in 1922 to a Russian mother and German father.
Whishaw was a member of the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre, at Hitchin's Queen Mother Theatre. He attended Henlow Middle School and then Samuel Whitbread Community College in Clifton. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2003.
