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You will find all of Mr. Whishaw's upcoming projects at the notebook. 

Ben's filmology will be updated here...

And I'm Leaving the old posts so you can read them anytime. 

Also take a look at the The Deepest Red  & The Pencil Kissed The Paper blogs for information. 

 

Filmology

Benjamin John Whishaw 

Born: Clifton, Bedfordshire, England, UK 

Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. 

Ben's breakthrough role was on stage as Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph wrote that “this is the kind of evening of which legends are made”, while The New York Times critic thought it was one of the most memorable Hamlets he had ever seen.

Video 

Q Meets James Bond

BW Skyfall Interview  

Introduction of Cloud Atlas Cast

Rehearsal Photos Hamlet 

Photo:

BW as "Q" in Skyfall Movie

Singing: Tenor

Music: Piano 

Enjoys reading, painting, music, dance, visual arts, gardening and traveling.

He loves animals and takes in stray cats. 

Whishaw quote about his personal life, "as an actor you have total rights to privacy and mystery, whatever your sexuality, whatever you do. I don't see why that has to be something you discuss openly because you do something in the public eye. I have no understanding of why we turn actors into celebrities."

  • Height: 5'9"
  • Hair: Brown
  • Eyes: Green

 

Latest Credits 

Film 

1999 The Trench 

1999 The Escort 

2001 Baby 

2001 My Brother Tom

2002 Spiritual Rampage

2004 77 Beds

2004 Enduring Love 

2004 Layer Cake

2005 Stoned 

2006 Perfume: The Story of a Murder

2007 I'm Not There

2008 Brideshead Revisited

2009 The International 

2009 Bright Star (Director Jane Campion) 

2009 Love Hate

2012 The Tempest 

2012 James Bond, Skyfall  (Director Sam Mendes) 

2012 Cloud Atlas (Directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer)

Television 

2000 Black Cab

2000 Other People's Children

2003 Ready When You Are Mr. McGill

2003 The Booze Cruise 

2005 Nathan Barley 

2008 Criminal Justice 

2010 All Signs of Death

2011 The Hour (BBC America) 

2012 Richard II: The Hollow Crown 

James Bond, Daniel Craig, Director Sam Mendes and Ben Whishaw

Stage 

2004 Hamlet (Old Vic) 

2005 Mercury Fur 

2006 The Seagull

2007 Leaves of Glass

2008 Some Trace of Her

2009 Cock

2012 The Pride 

Radio 

2004 Arthur 

2006 Look Back in Anger 

2011 Cock 


Wednesday
Feb272013

Best Performances of 2013: This Year's 33 Brightest Stars, Up Close & Unscripted 

 

THIS YEAR’S 33 BRIGHTEST STARS, UP CLOSE AND UNSCRIPTED.

By Lynn Hirschberg Photographs by Juergen Teller

Styled by Zoe Bedeaux February 2013 

In 2012, sex all but disappeared from the movies. Perhaps because it was an election year, perhaps because America has been absorbed by a longing for heroes, the films this year were largely devoid of physical passion. Even James Bond, notorious for his tantalizing, exotic affairs, was nearly chaste in Skyfall. The Bond girl in the latest chapter was his boss and maternal figure, M, who stands for England in all its historic glory. Similarly, the runaway hit of the holiday season was Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis brilliantly gives voice and humanity to the greatness of what government can do: pass a law that ends a war and frees the oppressed. And while the creation of the Amendment that abolished slavery in America represents a kind of sexy happy-ending history lesson, the couplings in the film are mostly legislative. Zero Dark Thirty is another, more contemporary, slice of American-history-in-action, and though the war still rages, it also ends with a victory—the death of Osama bin Laden. The movie follows a CIA analyst named Maya, portrayed with intensity and steel by Jessica Chastain, who believes she has found the arch-terrorist’s lair and will not rest until he is killed. Although Maya works with a team of men and some women, she seems to exist as an island. It’s entirely possible that her goals could be pursued even with human interaction, but that might compromise her hero status in the viewer’s eyes.

View all photos at W magazine

When a movie did explore messier territory—as in Silver Linings Playbook, in which Jennifer Lawrence is riveting as an unbalanced and very sexy widow, or Rust and Bone, a French film starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard as mismatched and emotionally damaged lovers—it seemed to be harder for audiences in 2012 to embrace. A film as chilly and complex as The Master, despite a thrilling performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a charismatic cult leader, failed at the box office; and The Deep Blue Sea, in which Rachel Weisz compellingly plays a woman who sacrifices her status and sanity for a love affair with an unworthy man, barely received notice when it was released. Even the wonderfully libidinous Matthew McConaughey, who had a banner year playing a hit man in Killer Joe, a secretive journalist in The Paperboy, and a sleazy male stripper in Magic Mike, was curiously chaste in all those movies. He may have taken his clothes off, but he never had a love scene. In fact, Magic Mike, which was a box office smash, was weirdly devoid of sex: The movie bumped and grinded, but it was, at heart, a tale of American commerce and entrepreneurship.

Perversely, the most romantic film of the year may have been Bernie, the true story of a gay man, played with affection by Jack Black, who became involved with an older, rich harridan and, in a moment of insanity, killed her. Nobody missed the wealthy widow for months, and Bernie spent her money enriching the small Texas town in which he lived. Eventually he was found guilty and is currently serving time in prison, but the movie makes a case for his actions: Bernie loved her, as much as it was possible, and he put her fortune to excellent use. Like Lincoln and the heroine of Zero Dark Thirty, he fought for the greater good.

Bernie didn’t attract much of an audience—it’s a quirky film and not a simplistic tale of right and wrong. If you believe, as I do, that movies reflect the pulse of the culture, then we are living in times defined by sanitized extremes. The gray area—the place where lives are not tidy and resolution is not easy—is where art thrives. For this portfolio, we have chosen 33 actors and actresses who complicate even the most pristine canvases. From Denzel Washington, who hits bottom as a troubled airline pilot in Flight, to Rebel Wilson, who delights as a misfit a cappella singer in Pitch Perfect, to Kerry Washington, who plays a rebellious slave in Django Unchained, we’ve homed in on performances that are unique and alive. Every movie could benefit from a jolt of complexity. Take Zero Dark Thirty, for example. There is one moment that, for me, makes the film great: Maya is bereft after bin Laden has been shot. Her task has been completed, her plan has been realized, but her identity is fused with her quest—and without it, who is she? Maya has won her battle, but she needs to dream another dream. Now, that movie would be interesting to see.

Wednesday
Feb272013

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  

Sunday
Nov182012

Romantic Holiday Gifts - Bright Star Soundtrack, Love Letters & DVD 

Listen to John Keats - La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Ben Whishaw - Soundtrack from the film Bright Star 2009. 

You can check out the "Bright Star" Soundtrack on Amazon

Watch Video Interview with Director Jane Campion and Ben Whishaw 

Jane Campion directs this touching, timeless tale of the passionate romance between English poet John Keats and his beloved muse. Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw star.

Jane Campion's literary biopic tells the true story of Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), a 23-year-old Londoner in 1818 whose independent streak manifests itself through an intense interest and love for fashion and dressmaking. Her neighbor, the struggling but gifted young poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw), underestimates her intelligence because he believes she's frivolous, and she, having no interest in literature, seems thoroughly disinterested in him. However, Fanny attempts to help the Keats family when John's brother becomes gravely ill, and in order to express his gratitude John agrees to teach her poetry -- leading Fanny and John to quickly fall deeply and profoundly in love with each other.. DVD on Amazon

 

Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne


(Introduction by Jane Campion)

About the Author: 

John Keats was born in October 1795, son of the manager of a livery stable in Moorfields. His father died in 1804 and his mother, of tuberculosis, in 1810. By then he had received a good education at John Clarke’s Enfield private school. In 1811 he was apprenticed to a surgeon, completing his professional training at Guy’s Hospital in 1816. His decision to commit himself to poetry rather than a medical career was a courageous one, based more on a challenge to himself than any actual achievement.

His genius was recognized and encouraged by early Mends like Charles Cowden Clarke and J. H. Reynolds, and in October 1816 he met Leigh Hunt, whose Examiner had already published Keats’s first poem. Only seven months later Poems (1817) appeared. Despite the high hopes of the Hunt circle, it was a failure. By the time Endymion was published in 1818 Keats’s name had been identified with Hunt’s ‘Cockney School’, and the Tory Blackwood’s Magazine delivered a violent attack on Keats as a lower-class vulgarian, with no right to aspire to ‘poetry’.

But for Keats fame lay not in contemporary literary politics but with posterity. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth were his inspiration and challenge. The extraordinary speed with which Keats matured is evident from his letters. In 1818 he had worked on the powerful epic fragment Hyperion, and in 1819 he wrote ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, the major odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing the 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821. Keats’s final volume did receive some contemporary critical recognition, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism began to be recognized, and not until this century that it became fully recognized.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
 Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
 And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
 So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
 And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
 With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
 Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
 Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
 And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
 And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
 A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,
 And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
 And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
 And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
 I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
 And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
 So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
 And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
 On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
 Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
 Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
 With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
 On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here
 Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
 And no birds sing.