The Chameleonic Power of Ben Whishaw
Expect Ben Whishaw to be a familiar face on our cinema screens this year. He’s just appeared as the villainous Uriah Heep in Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield, he’s reprising Q for the third time in the upcoming Bond release, No Time to Die, and, most interestingly of all, his turn in Palme d’Or-contending Little Joe is about to reach UK screens this weekend.
Perhaps familiar face is the wrong turn of phrase for Whishaw though. There have been few actors with a more prodigious catalogue of high quality roles in theatre, TV and film over the last 20 years, but he’s still not quite a household name, and, in fact, there is a certain facelessness, a chameleon-like feel, to his presence on screen. I recently introduced Whishaw to my poetry students on the basis of his turn as John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star. To a person, they were in the dark as to who Whishaw actually is, until I dropped in the fact of him playing Q in the latest Daniel Craig-run of James Bond. The irony of that sole reference is that Whishaw would have been a genuinely leftfield and potentially intuitive choice for the Bond producers when they look to replace Craig, rather than their more unimaginative realisation…
