Benjamin John "Ben" Whishaw (born 14 October 1980) is an English actor who … Read Full Bio ↴Benjamin John "Ben" Whishaw (born 14 October 1980) is an English actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Whishaw is perhaps best known for his breakthrough role as Hamlet, and his role as the lead character in Tom Tykwer's film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
Whishaw was born and raised in Bedfordshire, the son of Linda, who works in cosmetics, and Josey Whishaw, who works in information technology. He has a twin brother, James, and was a member of the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre at Hitchin's Queen Mother Theatre. He attended Henlow Middle School and then Samuel Whitbread Community College in Clifton, Bedfordshire. During his time with the group, he first rose to prominence during collaborations with their offshoot theatre company, Big Spirit. He was involved in many productions – perhaps most notably, If This Is A Man (also performed as The Drowned & The Saved). This was a piece devised by the company based on the book of the same name by Primo Levi, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. This harrowing and moving book was adapted into a physical theatre piece by the group and taken to the 1995 Edinburgh Festival where it garnered five-star reviews and great critical acclaim. Whishaw played the character of Levi in this and subsequent productions of the show.
As the lead in Trevor Nunn's 2004 young-cast production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, he received highly favourable reviews. The role was shared with Al Weaver in an unusual arrangement that saw Whishaw playing 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. It was Whishaw, however, who featured most prominently in the marketing materials and in the majority of reviews.
Whishaw's film and TV 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) and, in 2005, nominated as best actor in four award ceremonies for his Hamlet. He also played Keith Richards in the Brian Jones biopic Stoned. In the spring of 2005, Whishaw received lots of press for his turn as a drug dealer, acting alongside Robert Boulter and Fraser Ayres in Philip Ridley's post-apocalyptic fringe play Mercury Fur.
In Perfume, Whishaw plays Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume maker whose craft turns deadly. The film was released in Germany in September 2006 and in the U.S. in December 2006. In the same year Whishaw worked on Pawel Pawlikowski's abandoned The Restraint of Beasts.
Whishaw appeared in I'm Not There in 2007 as one of the Bob Dylan reincarnations; in Criminal Justice, a Tiger Aspect series for the BBC, in 2008; a new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited; and ...some trace of her, an adaptation of The Idiot at the National Theatre.
At the end of 2009 he starred in Cock, a new play by Mike Bartlett at the Royal Court Theatre. In 2009 he also starred as the poet John Keats in the film Bright Star, which was written and directed by Jane Campion.
In February, 2010 Whishaw made a very successful off-broadway debut at MCC Theater in the US premiere of the awarding winning play The Pride by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The performance co-starred Hugh Dancy and Andrea Riseborough and was directed by Joe Mantello.
He appears in Julie Taymor's forthcoming big-screen adaptation of The Tempest and is attached to work on the film Kill Your Darlings (in which he plays Lucien Carr).
Ben Whishaw's most recent project is The Hour, a BBC Two drama series, written and created by award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan.
Whishaw was born and raised in Bedfordshire, the son of Linda, who works in cosmetics, and Josey Whishaw, who works in information technology. He has a twin brother, James, and was a member of the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre at Hitchin's Queen Mother Theatre. He attended Henlow Middle School and then Samuel Whitbread Community College in Clifton, Bedfordshire. During his time with the group, he first rose to prominence during collaborations with their offshoot theatre company, Big Spirit. He was involved in many productions – perhaps most notably, If This Is A Man (also performed as The Drowned & The Saved). This was a piece devised by the company based on the book of the same name by Primo Levi, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. This harrowing and moving book was adapted into a physical theatre piece by the group and taken to the 1995 Edinburgh Festival where it garnered five-star reviews and great critical acclaim. Whishaw played the character of Levi in this and subsequent productions of the show.
As the lead in Trevor Nunn's 2004 young-cast production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, he received highly favourable reviews. The role was shared with Al Weaver in an unusual arrangement that saw Whishaw playing 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. It was Whishaw, however, who featured most prominently in the marketing materials and in the majority of reviews.
Whishaw's film and TV 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) and, in 2005, nominated as best actor in four award ceremonies for his Hamlet. He also played Keith Richards in the Brian Jones biopic Stoned. In the spring of 2005, Whishaw received lots of press for his turn as a drug dealer, acting alongside Robert Boulter and Fraser Ayres in Philip Ridley's post-apocalyptic fringe play Mercury Fur.
In Perfume, Whishaw plays Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume maker whose craft turns deadly. The film was released in Germany in September 2006 and in the U.S. in December 2006. In the same year Whishaw worked on Pawel Pawlikowski's abandoned The Restraint of Beasts.
Whishaw appeared in I'm Not There in 2007 as one of the Bob Dylan reincarnations; in Criminal Justice, a Tiger Aspect series for the BBC, in 2008; a new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited; and ...some trace of her, an adaptation of The Idiot at the National Theatre.
At the end of 2009 he starred in Cock, a new play by Mike Bartlett at the Royal Court Theatre. In 2009 he also starred as the poet John Keats in the film Bright Star, which was written and directed by Jane Campion.
In February, 2010 Whishaw made a very successful off-broadway debut at MCC Theater in the US premiere of the awarding winning play The Pride by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The performance co-starred Hugh Dancy and Andrea Riseborough and was directed by Joe Mantello.
He appears in Julie Taymor's forthcoming big-screen adaptation of The Tempest and is attached to work on the film Kill Your Darlings (in which he plays Lucien Carr).
Ben Whishaw's most recent project is The Hour, a BBC Two drama series, written and created by award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan.
Anthem for doomed youth
Ben Whishaw Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'Anthem for doomed youth' by these artists:
10,000 Maniacs For whom do the bells toll when sentenced to die The…
10000 Maniacs For whom the bells toll When sentenced to die The…
Howards Alias Something snapped in me today, I didn't see it there. I…
Mark Rivers What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the mon…
The Indelicates You’re howling, abyss-eyed and broken You’re perverted and …
The Libertines Here's a story about the rules of death and glory To…
The Libertines - Anthem For Doomed Youth Here's a story about the rules of death and glory To…
Void of Silence an ecstasy of flumbling fitting the helmets just in time b…
Wilfred Owen What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the mon…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Ben Whishaw:
A Conversation "We haven't spoken in so long, dear" This year has gone…
La Belle Dame Sans Merci I. O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely…
Nowhere to Go But Up Life's a balloon That tumbles or rises Depending on what is …
Trip a Little Light Fantastic "I may be circling the drain, but I got a…
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seanio casey
His letters. He was 25.
As a lay preacher at Dunsden Vicarage (1912-13), in South Oxfordshire, Owen lost his belief in God and became attracted to the company of some of his young parishioners, treating one 13-year-old boy ‘to a secret tea at the Vicarage’ and enjoying a tryst in the woods where the two ‘lay in hawthorn glades’. Owen later wrote: ‘I fall in love with children, elfin fair.
Poetry of Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include Dulce et Decorum Est, Insensibility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and Strange Meeting.
Wilfred Owen was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town’s church bells declared peace.
(edited from the Wikipedia article on Wilfred Owen)
Over the past few years, I have come to find great admiration for the poetry of Wilfred Owen. In my every day life and in the writing of this blog I find myself thinking of his poems. As the above mini-bio indicates, Owen is chiefly remembered for his poetry about war, and indeed those poems move me as deeply as a person who has never experienced war can be moved. Those poems are, I believe, vital in that they counter the popular, glamorous (though less so now than in the past) image of war with a stark and horrifying image founded on honesty.
Despite its relevance to our current times, it is not Owen’s collection of war poems that I think of on an almost daily basis, but his smaller in number (and more often neglected) poems about boys! I suppose I am in no position to make statements about Owen’s sexuality, but it seems to me that he had an admiration for boys and their beauty that is very much in line with my own. I am hardly the first person to suggest that he was a pedophile, and if I may be so bold I would say that his poetry about boys is not neglected for its immaturity or weakness (it is often dismissed as such in scholarly works) but because it inspires uncomfortable questions that cannot be answered. (Owen’s mother burned a bag of his personal papers after his death at his request, and his brother removed “discreditable” lines from his letters and diaries.)
I have collected here a number of Owen’s poems dealing with boys, along with some small commentary, so that you may decide for yourself if this is the poetry of a man who loves boys, or sees them merely through artistic eyes.
Sonnet
To a Child
Sweet is your antique body, not yet young.
Beauty withheld from youth that looks for youth.
Fair only for your father. Dear among
Masters in art. To all men else uncouth
Save me; who knows your smile comes very old,
Learnt of the happy dead that laughed with gods;
For earlier suns than ours have lent you gold,
Sly fauns and trees have given you jigs and nods.
But soon your heart, hot-beating like a bird’s,
Shall slow down. Youth shall lop your hair,
And you must learn wry meanings in our words.
Your smile shall dull, because too keen aware;
And when for hopes your hand shall be uncurled,
Your eyes shall close, being opened to the world.
WHO IS THE GOD OF CANONGATE?
Who is the god of Canongate?
I, for I trifle with men and fate.
Art thou high in the heart of London?
Yea, for I do what is done and undone.
What is thy throne, thou barefoot god?
All pavements where my feet have trod.
Where is thy shrine, then, little god?
Up secret stairs men mount unshod.
Say what libation such men fill?
There lift their lusts and let them spill.
Why do you smell of the moss in Arden?
If I told you, Sir, your look would harden.
What are you called, I ask your pardon?
I am called the Flower of Covent Garden.
What shall I pay for you, lily-lad?
Not all the gold King Solomon had.
How can I buy you, London Flower?
Buy me for ever, but not for an hour.
When shall I pay you, Violet Eyes?
With laughter first, and after with sighs.
But you will fade, my delicate bud?
No, there is too much sap in my blood.
Will you not shrink in my shut room?
No, there I’ll break into fullest bloom
Anne Michels
As the bells rang throughout London marking the armistice ending WWI, Wilford Owen’s family received notice that he had been killed in action. He was himself, a doomed youth.
LegSimo
He was really unlucky. He survived most of the war only to be killed a week before the end.
Nina
How beautifully poignant. Well put.
danbuter
Sean Bean could make reading a grocery list exciting.
Shark Chucker
He'd be dead before he'd read as far as the biscuits
Nathan Bellamy
He spoilt that poem by being over dramatic
lottiebelottie
One hundred years ago today since Wilfred Owen died. I'm proud to have named my son after him.
Tom Weston
Wilfred or Owen, may I ask?
Timmy
Literal Chills heard this 5 years ago and still can't get it out of my head 🥶
Sod Thelotayou
Gives me goosebumps to listen to Sean Bean reading this classic.