Born Krishna Bhanji, Kingsley was born in Yorkshire, the son of a general
practitioner. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and started
out in amateur dramatics as a teenager before making his professional
debut aged 23. In 1967 he made his first London appearance at the Aldwych
theatre and then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Kingsley went
on to make his big screen debut in the Alistair MacLean adapted thriller
Fear is the Key (1972). From 1975 to 1977, Kingsley worked with the
National Theatre then subsequently returned to the RSC.
His film career took off when director Richard
Attenborough selected Kingsley for the demanding lead role in the
biopic Gandhi
(1982). The film swept the international awards that year including
an Academy Award for Best Actor. Kingsley spent the following decade
playing a wide variety of characters in European films. Among his more
notable parts was a born loser in Turtle Diary (1985), an Arab prince
in Harem (1985), co-starring alongside James Wilby and Hugh
Grant in Merchant Ivory’s Maurice
(1987) and a suspected Nazi war criminal in Roman Polanski’s Death
and the Maiden (1994). Subsequent Hollywood roles included playing the
capable Dr. Watson to Michael Caine’s
bumbling Sherlock Holmes in Without
a Clue (1988), Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky in Barry Levinson’s
Bugsy (1991), an incorruptible American vice president in the Ivan Reitman
comedy Dave (1993), Jewish bookkeeper Itshak Stern Steven Spielberg’s
acclaimed Holocaust epic Schindler's List (1993) and cast in a scarce
good-guy role in the sci-fi thriller Species (1995).
In the latter half of the 1990s, Kingsley continued to embrace a variety
of eclectic roles including barbarous barber Sweeney Todd in John
Schlesinger's made-for-tv The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998). Retaining
his thirst for variety, he entered into the new millennium with his
scene-stealing portrayal of tightly wound Cockney gangster Don Logan
in Sexy Beast
(2000). Kingsley received an Oscar nomination for his performance in
the film adaptation of Andre Dubus III's acclaimed novel, House of Sand
and Fog (2003). He was knighted by the Queen in March 2002.
