Whishaw was born on 14 October 1980, in Clifton, Bedfordshire, and was brought up there and in neighbouring Langford. He is the son of Linda (née Hope), who works in cosmetics, and Jose Whishaw, who works in sports with young people.[3] He has a fraternal twin brother, James.
His mother is of English ancestry, and his father is of French, German and Russian descent.[4] His father's German line had the surname of Stellmacher. (This is a traditional German occupational name for a wheelwright.)[4][5]
Whishaw's paternal grandfather was born Jean Vladimir Stellmacher in Istanbul in 1922, to a Russian mother and German father, who was stationed there. The couple moved to Kassel, Germany, where Stellmacher grew up and was educated.[6] Despairing about serving in the army of Hitler and through a connection of his tutor, Jean Stellmacher met with a contact at the British embassy and was recruited to serve as a British spy while serving in the German army. He spoke seven languages. Jean Stellmacher changed his name to John Victor Whishaw during World War II after joining the British in Cairo. He entered England in 1947 after being discharged. He married Olga, a woman he had met in France, and together they made new lives in the UK. Their children included Whishaw's father and a daughter Ingrid. They did not know about their father's wartime adventures until shortly before John's death in 1994, when their mother Olga told them. (She survived to 2015, dying at the age of 90.) Ingrid took back the surname of Stellmacher. Whishaw (and his father) kept the adopted name his grandfather chose.[5]
Whishaw was involved in many productions with Big Spirit Youth Theatre, including If This Is a Man (also performed as The Drowned & The Saved), a piece devised by the company based on the book of the same name by Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, writer and survivor as a young man of Auschwitz concentration camp.[8] It was adapted as a physical theatre piece by the group and taken to the 1995 Edinburgh Festival, where it garnered five-star reviews and great critical acclaim.[9]
As the lead in Trevor Nunn's 2004 production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, Whishaw received highly favourable reviews, was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actor and received third prize at the Ian Charleson Awards. The role was shared with Al Weaver in an unusual arrangement. Whishaw played all nights except for Mondays and matinées. Nunn is reported to have made this arrangement due to the youth of the two actors playing the lead, to relieve some of the pressure on each.
His film and television credits include Layer Cake and Chris Morris's 2005 sitcom Nathan Barley, in which he played a character called Pingu. He was named "Most Promising Newcomer" at the 2001 British Independent Film Awards for My Brother Tom. In 2005 he was nominated as best actor in four award programs for his portrayal of Hamlet. He also played Keith Richards in the Brian Jones biopic Stoned. In the spring of 2005, Whishaw received much attention for his role as a drug dealer in the world premiere of Philip Ridley's controversial stage play Mercury Fur.[10]
In the film Perfume (2006), Whishaw played Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume maker whose craft turns deadly. The film was released in Germany in September 2006 and in the United States in December 2006. In the same year, Whishaw worked on Paweł Pawlikowski's abandoned The Restraint of Beasts.[11]
Whishaw appeared in the 23rd James Bond film, Skyfall, in the role of Q.[17] He portrayed a younger Q than portrayed in previous films; Peter Burton and Desmond Llewelyn both received the role when they were in their forties, while Llewelyn and John Cleese played the role into their eighties and sixties, respectively. In addition, he was teamed a fourth time with Daniel Craig after they starred in the films The Trench, Enduring Love, and Layer Cake.
For several years, Whishaw refused to answer questions about his personal life, saying: "For me, it's important to keep a level of anonymity. As an actor, your job is to persuade people that you're someone else. So if you're constantly telling people about yourself, I think you're shooting yourself in the foot."[34] In 2011, he told Out magazine: "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."[35]
In August 2012, Whishaw entered into a civil partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw, whom he had met in 2009.[36] In 2014, he publicly discussed his coming out, saying that it was a tense experience for him but "everyone was surprisingly lovely".[37] He split from Bradshaw in 2022.[38]
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References
↑ "Ben Whishaw". Biography.com. 15 May 2018. Archived from the original on 4 September 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
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