Krishna Bhanji became Ben Kingsley, and the work arrived almost immediately
Born Krishna Pandit Bhanji in a Yorkshire village, the future Oscar winner found casting directors unsure where to place an actor with his name. After switching to Ben Kingsley in the 1960s, he said, the offers came straight away. He also turned down the Beatles' publisher, who wanted to make him a pop star.
His mother was an English actress and model; his father, born in Zanzibar to a family of Gujarati spice traders from Jamnagar, came to Britain at 14. Kingsley grew up in Pendlebury near Manchester, shared a classroom at Manchester Grammar School with Robert Powell, and was raised outside his father's Ismaili faith; he is a Quaker. The college he attended in Salford later named a theatre after him.
Offered pop stardom by Dick James in 1966, he chose the Royal Shakespeare Company instead, joining in 1967 after auditioning for Trevor Nunn and devoting some 15 years almost entirely to the stage. He played Demetrius in Peter Brook's celebrated 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream and took it to Broadway in 1971 alongside Patrick Stewart. Early screen work included a stint on Coronation Street and a debut film role in the 1972 thriller Fear Is the Key.
Richard Attenborough's Gandhi in 1982 changed everything. Kingsley's quiet, restrained performance as the Indian leader won the Academy Award for best actor along with the BAFTA and a Golden Globe. He went on to play Holocaust survivor Itzhak Stern opposite Liam Neeson in Schindler's List, the gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugsy, which earned another Oscar nomination, and a real-life chess coach, Bruce Pandolfini, in Searching for Bobby Fischer. After a run of harrowing parts he picked a family comedy, Spooky House, because the heavier roles had left him feeling traumatised.
Later work spans Sexy Beast, Shutter Island and Hugo, voice roles in The Jungle Book and The Boxtrolls, and more than a decade as the washed-up actor Trevor Slattery in Marvel films and the 2026 series Wonder Man. Knighted in 2002 for services to British film, he also holds a Grammy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Source: Ben Kingsley
