Age: 82
male
Sir Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji; 31 December 1943) is an English actor. He has received accolades throughout his career spanning five decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor in 2002 for services to the British film industry. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and received the Britannia Award in 2013. Born to an English mother and an Indian Gujarati father with roots in Jamnagar, Kingsley began his career in theatre, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and spending the next 15 years appearing mainly on stage. His starring roles included productions of As You Like It (his West End debut for the company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1967), Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Also known for his television roles, he received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1989), Joseph (1995), Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001), and Mrs. Harris (2006). In film, Kingsley is known for his starring role as Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), for which he subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Actor and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. For his portrayal of Itzhak Stern in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), he received a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role nomination. He was Oscar-nominated for Bugsy (1990), Sexy Beast (2000), and House of Sand and Fog (2003). His other notable films include Maurice (1987), Sneakers (1992), Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Death and the Maiden (1994), Twelfth Night (1996), Tuck Everlasting (2002), Elegy (2008), Shutter Island (2010), and Hugo (2011). Kingsley played the character of Trevor Slattery in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Iron Man 3 (2013), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and the upcoming Disney+ series Wonder Man. He also acted in the blockbusters Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) and Ender's Game (2013). Kingsley lent his voice to the films The Boxtrolls (2014) and The Jungle Book (2016).
Sir Ben Kingsley
Mohandas Gandhi
for Mohandas Gandhi in Civilization
Suggested by augustuslookingbill
In the beginning, the Earth was without form, and void. But the Sun shone upon the sleeping Earth and deep inside the brittle crust massive forces waited to be unleashed. The seas parted and great continents were formed. The continents shifted, mountains arose. Earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves. Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava and charged the atmosphere with strange gases. Into this swirling maelstrom of Fire and Air and Water the first stirrings of Life appeared: tiny organisms, cells, and amoeba, clinging to tiny sheltered habitats. But the seeds of Life grew, and strengthened, and spread, and diversified, and prospered, and soon every continent and climate teemed with Life. And with Life came instinct, and specialization, natural selection, Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and Mammals and finally there evolved a species known as Man and there appeared the first faint glimmers of Intelligence. The fruits of intelligence were many: fire, tools, and weapons, the hunt, farming, and the sharing of food, the family, the village, and the tribe. Now it required but one more ingredient: a great Leader to unite the quarreling tribes to harness the power of the land to build a legacy that would stand the test of time: a CIVILIZATION!
