Pastor Byron Brown/Pa

Sir Ben Kingsley

 

Sir Ben Kingsley stars in PERPETUAL GRACE, LTD. as “Pastor Byron Brown,” known to his parishioners as “Pa,” a pastor who has used religion to bilk hundreds of innocent men and women out of their life savings.


After earning an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two BAFTA Awards for his riveting portrayal of Indian social leader Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Ben Kingsley has continued to bring unequaled detail and nuance to each role he portrays, remaining a coveted and ubiquitous talent.

 

Sir Ben is currently in production on Perpetual Grace, LTD., a 10-episode modern noir drama from MGM Television. The series follows James, a young grifter, as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown (Kingsley), who turns out to be far more dangerous than he suspects.

 

Sir Ben most recently starred as Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann in the Chris Weitz directed biopic Operation Finale. MGM’s thrilling true story follows the 1960 covert mission of legendary Mossad agent Peter Malkin as he infiltrates Argentina and captures Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who masterminded the transportation logistics that brought millions of innocent Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. Entertainment Weekly hails, “Kingsley as captor and prisoner…delivers the film’s most charged jolts of electricity.”

 

Sir Ben also narrated Amazon Studios’ eight-part series, All or Nothing: Manchester City, a documentary series on Manchester City’s historic title-winning season. The series was released to Prime Video this past August.

 

Sir Ben most recently completed production on Gideon Raff’s The Red Sea Diving Resort alongside Chris Evans and Haley Bennet and Intrigo: Death of an Author directed by Daniel Alfredson. He will also be starring alongside Monica Bellucci and Itay Tiran in the new espionage drama Spider in the Web.

 

This past April, Sir Ben was seen in Backstabbing for Beginners opposite Theo James, which tells the story of a young program coordinator at the United Nations who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving Iraq’s oil reserves. He recently produced and starred in Brad Silberling’s war thriller An Ordinary Man alongside Hera Hilar. He was also seen in Eran Creevy’s Collide with Anthony Hopkins.

 

Sir Ben’s film career originally began in l972 with the thriller Fear is the Key, directed by Michael Tuchner, but his first major role came a decade later in Gandhi, directed by Lord Richard Attenborough; in addition to his Best Actor Oscar, the epic won seven other Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. 11 years later, he would star in another Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Director, Steven Spielberg’s unforgettable Schindler’s List, for which his performance as Itzhak Stern brought him a BAFTA Award nomination. He was again an Academy Award nominee for his portrayals in Barry Levinson’s Bugsy, Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast, and Vadim Perelman’s House of Sand and Fog.

 

In 2013, he starred in his first $1 billion-grossing movie, Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, as “The Mandarin.” Returning to the Marvel universe, he expanded upon the unique characterization in the short film All Hail the King, written and directed by Iron Man 3 scribe Drew Pearce.

 

He also starred in another recent box office blockbuster, Disney’s The Jungle Book, where he lent his voice as Bagheera which grossed close to $1 billion internationally.

 

Among his many other feature films are David Hugh Jones’ Betrayal, adapted by Harold Pinter from the latter’s play; John Irvin’s Turtle Diary, again from a script by Mr. Pinter; Thom Eberhardt’s Without a Clue, as Dr. Watson to Michael Caine’s Sherlock Holmes; Ivan Reitman’s Dave; Steven Zaillian’s Searching for Bobby Fischer; Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden and, as Fagin, Oliver Twist; Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness, which won the Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, for which he received a London Critics Circle Film Award nomination; Prince of Persia with Jake Gyllenhaal; Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Hugo, portraying cinema pioneer Georges Méliès in the latter film which won five Academy Awards; Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator; Gavin Hood’s Ender’s Game; Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings; Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb; The Boxtrolls, Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year and for which he won the Annie Award (the animation community’s Oscars equivalent) for Outstanding Achievement in Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production; and Learning to Drive, reteaming him with his Elegy director Isabel Coixet and costar Patricia Clarkson.

 

Sir Ben’s notable television work includes Phyllis Nagy’s telefilm Mrs. Harris, for which he was an Emmy Award nominee; Brian Gibson’s telefilm Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story, in which Sir Ben portrayed the real-life hero and for which he received an Emmy Award nomination; John Schlesinger’s telefilm The Tale of Sweeney Todd, for which his performance in the title role earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination; Anne Frank: The Whole Story, directed by Robert Dornhelm, which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries. His portrayal of Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank brought him a Screen Actors Guild Award; and most recently the Spike event television series Tut, where he portrayed Grand Vizier Ay opposite Avan Jogia as King Tutankhamun, in which he was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

 

Steeped in British theatre, he marked the beginning of his professional acting career with his acceptance into the Royal Shakespeare Company in l967. He performed in the RSC’s productions A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and – playing the title roles – Othello and Hamlet, among others. Over the years, his diverse theatrical portfolio has also encompassed stagings of The Country Wife, The Cherry Orchard, A Betrothal, and Waiting for Godot.

 

In 1984, he was awarded the Padma Sri by Indira Gandhi and the government of India. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the New Year’s Eve Honors List 2002. Sir Ben was honored in 2014 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with its National Leadership Award, recognizing his exceptional contributions to keeping Holocaust memory alive.