The Look: Mr. Ben Whishaw

Photography by Mr Matt Irwin | Styling by Mr Tony Cook 
Words by Mr Jonathan Heaf, features director of GQ

View more photos at Mr. Porter's Journal  

The first time I spied Mr Ben Whishaw in the flesh - out in the real world, actual size, in original 3-D - was on the streets of Manhattan, almost three years ago. The actor was, back in 2010, starring alongside Ms Andrea Riseborough - a rising talent herself - in an off-Broadway production of The Pride, written by playwright Mr Alexi Kaye Campbell and involving two parallel love stories between a man (Mr Hugh Dancy) and a woman (Ms Riseborough), and a man (Mr Dancy again) and another man (Mr Whishaw).

Looking half lost, half stoned and just a sprinkle self-conscious, Mr Whishaw shuffled apologetically past that day, eyes drilling down into the New York pavement in a manner that might be described as a little like Mr Kevin Spacey's cripple, Verbal, in The Usual Suspects.

It seemed to me that Mr Whishaw was going to some pains to slope past unnoticed; happy to observe, rather than be observed. Still, I clocked him. Or thought I did. And prior to meeting him again three years later in a more official capacity I felt proud - no, sure - that this sighting confirmed all my assumed preconceptions of this most British of British actors: short, boyishly handsome, a little jumpy, a lot introverted, nice eyes and about as brazen and as bawdy as a newborn foal.

Of course, that's what everyone always thinks about Mr Whishaw: reluctant, fame-weary, bookish, and unfathomably thespian. Well, we're all spectacularly wrong. (Mostly wrong anyway; he is very thespian. And quite bookish.) And if his brilliantly erudite, assertive turn in the BBC's The Hour (across both past seasons as the wily Freddie Lyon) failed to convince you of such collective misreadings of the man, then his excellent reincarnation of James Bond's gadget guy, Q, inSkyfall last year will have confirmed what you already suspected deep down: that there's more to this boy than meets the eye.

"I just keep myself to myself, mostly," says Mr Whishaw. "Perhaps that's why people don't see me as this larger-than-life... celebrity." To his credit, the way in which he almost retches out that last word like a cat coughing up a fur ball shows you his disregard - or rather, what little interest - he has in our cultural obsession with the famous for being famous.

"I do get stopped on the street, although rarely. And they always have something lovely to say. Someone was talking to me about that poor girl in the Twilightfilms - Kirsten, is it?"

Kristen

"Kristen, that's right. I wouldn't like that. Not at all. Living in hotel rooms and being mobbed. A terrible state of existing. Terrible!"

View more photos at Mr. Porter's Journal