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Ben Kingsley
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Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on 31st December 1943 in Scarborough. His dad was a Ugandan Asian doctor and his mother an actress. He grew up in Manchester and got into acting after seeing Ian Holm's Hamlet at the age of 19. His father suggested he change his name to further his career - he took his stage surname from his grandfather, a Zanzibar-based spice trader nicknamed King Clove - and he was accepted into the RSC in 1967. He ... wanted to be a singer, and was once courted by Beatles impresario Brian Epstein. Kingsley found fame and Oscar success as Gandhi.
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Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on New Year's Eve, 1943, in Yorkshire, England. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and achieved a reputation as a musical performer. By the time he made his film debut, in 1972's Fear Is the Key, Kingsley was a familiar face in British theatre and television.
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From All Movie Guide: Chameleon-like British actor Ben Kingsley has proven he can play just about anyone, from Nazi war criminals to Jewish Holocaust survivors to quiet British bookshop owners. For many viewers... he will always be inextricably linked with his title role in Gandhi, a film that won him an Oscar and the undying respect of critics and filmgoers alike.
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Chameleon-like British actor Ben Kingsley has proven he can play just about anyone, from Nazi war criminals to Jewish Holocaust survivors to quiet British bookshop owners. For many viewers... he will always be inextricably linked with his title role in Gandhi, a film that won him an Oscar and the undying respect of critics and filmgoers alike. Of English, East Indian, and South African descent, Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Snaiton, Yorkshire, England. The son of a general practitioner, Kingsley started out in amateur theatricals in Manchester before making his professional debut at age 23. In 1967 he made his first London appearance at the Aldwych theater and then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, devoting himself almost exclusively to stage work for the next 15 years (with the exception of two obscure films, Fear Is the Key [1972] and Hard Labour [1973]). When asked about his favorite stage roles, he listed Hamlet, The Tempest's Ariel, and Volpone's Mosca.
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One of England's most respected stage actors, Ben Kingsley became internationally famous after his Oscar-winning performance as Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi. Kingsley's was accepted as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and throughout the '60s and '70s he performed on stage and in television programs, usually in productions of William Shakespeare and Harold Pinter plays. Since Gandhi he has played a number of supporting and lead roles in the movies, in addition to numerous stage productions in England and the U.S. (including Edmund Kean in 1983). Kingsley's other Oscar nominations include for Bugsy (1991, starring Warren Beatty), Sexy Beast (2000) and The House of Sand and Fog (2003, co-starring Jennifer Connelly). His other movies include Sneakers (1992, with Robert Redford, Death And The Maiden (1994, with Sigourney Weaver) and Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist (2005).
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In Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, Krishna Banji, who would be famous as Ben Kingsley, was born on December 31, 1943, but was raised in Salford, England. His father is Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a Kenyan-born medical doctor of Indian origin, and his mother is Anna Lyna Mary Bhanji, an English-born actress and fashion model of Jewish-European descent. Ben attended Manchester Grammar School in Manchester and it was there he began acting on stage.
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Ben Kingsley