Ben Mendelsohn

Born in Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, on April 3, 1969, Paul Benjamin Mendelsohn has Frederick, a prestigious medical researcher, and Carole Ann, a nurse who died when he was still a child, as parents. The family spent long periods in Europe before returning to his native country, when the boy was old enough to study at the institute. There he decided to choose the dramatic art class, at first because he thought it would be easy for him to pass, but he immediately realized that he showed enormous talent for this discipline.

For this reason, he decided to take tests, so at the age of 15 he appeared in the hit series for those latitudes Special Brigade , and at 16 he became one of the protagonists of another, The Henderson Kids , along with Kylie Minogue , which made him popular with the Australian public. “As a young man he was very bad,” admits the actor. “If I have managed to perfect my technique, it has been based on effort, because I wanted to continue in the business, and if I did not improve, they would fire me.”

The Australian media lumped him in at the time with the hottest emerging talents of his generation, including Russell Crowe , Noah Taylor and Guy Pearce . They nicknamed the group “the pack of mice”, in reference to the Rat Pack, or “pack of rats” of Frank Sinatra and company. In his early filmography, the co-production Sirenas with the United Kingdom stands out , together with Hugh Grant , and Spotswood (1992), by Mark Joffe , where he was a young worker in a moccasin factory who helped a consultant ( Anthony Hopkins ) to find what it goes badly in the company. InIdiot Box, the silly box , gave life to a young man angry with the world who allowed his best friend to commit a robbery.

Occasionally they recruited him to play supporting roles in Hollywood movies, in titles like A Wild Cowboy , with Tom Selleck . In the 90s he considered moving there permanently, coming to share the screen with Sylvester Stallone , in Vertical Limit , where he was a daredevil climber who gave rise to comic sequences. But the film did not succeed, so Ben Mendelsohn packed his bags to return home. There he concentrated for a long time on theater and television. He tried his luck again in the international arena with Terrence Malick ‘s The New World , and he also took part in the blockbuster Australia , by his compatriot Baz Luhrmann , and in the science fiction film without much impact Signs of the future .

But the real springboard for Ben Mendelsohn’s career was the Australian gangster film Animal Kingdom , where he gave life to the unforgettable Andrew, known as Pope, the eldest of the Cody brothers, locked in a dirty war with the police. The film had other great works by Guy Pearce , Joel Edgerton and especially Jacki Weaver , an Oscar candidate for giving life to her grandmother. From that moment on, he was raffled off by the best directors, such as Andrew Dominik , who claimed him to be a criminal, in Kill Them Gently , along with Brad Pitt , Christopher Nolan, which turned him into the evil businessman Daggett, with a brief presence in The Dark Knight: The Legend Reborn , or Ridley Scott , who offered him to give life to Viceroy Hegep, in Exodus: Gods and Kings .

Suddenly he’s become the villain that everyone wants to have in their movie, when you don’t think of Christoph Waltz . He rocked this role especially in Rogue One, a Star Wars spin-off story about the theft of the Death Star plans, where his Imperial officer, Orson Krennic, raised the bar quite a bit. But he has also played this role in Ready Player One , the disappointing Robin Hood. Outlaw, hero, legend , and initially in  Captain Marvel ,where he humanized the skrull who took advantage of his abilities to change shape and become Nick Fury’s boss. “I am flattered that they think of me for these characters, because when I grew up the villains of blockbusters were played by first-rate actors, often English. Interpreters who had something special like Vincent Price have been pigeonholed in this terrain ”, he comments. He has one left from the James Bond saga. “It scares me because I couldn’t beat Michael Lonsdale , in Moonraker , who for me has been the best in the entire franchise.”

From time to time he strays from this archetype to remind audiences that he’s good at any other role such as King George VI in Darkest Hour . He especially shone as the eldest son and black sheep of the lead family, the Rayburns, in the Netflix series Bloodline , for which he won an Emmy and was nominated for a Golden Globe.