British actor Ben Whishaw discusses ‘The Black Doves’ and ‘Peter Hujar’s Day,’ and Refusing to Be Pigeonholed and Playing Characters Whose Sexuality Isn’t Their ‘Defining Characteristic.’
Ben Whishaw has juggled multiple and different projects, but he admits that last year reached a new level.
Around the same time he was shooting Netflix’s pulpy spy thriller series “Black Doves,” playing a contract killer with a conscience alongside Keira Knightley, he was recording the voice of Paddington Bear for the marmalade lover’s latest family adventure, “Paddington in Peru,” while also rehearsing for his lead in new West End adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s bleak tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot.”
“And all in one week! It was one of the strangest gear switches ever,” he says, “but it is nice to inhabit so many different worlds.”
Whishaw’s latest switch takes him to a different world entirely — to New York’s East Village in the early 1970s — for “Peter Hujar’s Day,” which played at Sundance.
The film, which is his second with director Ira Sachs after “Passages,” sees him play the titular photographer — whose work was only celebrated posthumously after he died of AIDS in 1987. The biopic, which spans just 24 hours, is based on taped conversation between Hujar and his author friend Linda Rosenkrantz (played by Rebecca Hall) in which she asked him to recall the events of a day.
It’s a concept that is “obviously a strange proposition for a film as it isn’t inherently dramatic,” but the end result proved to be “beautiful and meditative.”
Another film collaboration with Sachs is already in the works: “We have similar tastes and interests — it’s really lovely to share those things with somebody.”
Whishaw admits his eclectic array of roles are part of a conscious effort to avoid being pigeon-holed.
“You have to refuse to be categorized, you have to keep very free,” he says. “People love to categorize and file you somewhere and you have to really resist that, however that ultimately manifests.”
His resume proves his point: alongside his famous performances as James Bond’s gadget-master Q and Paddington, he played a notorious murderer (“Perfume”), 19th century poet John Keats (“Bright Star”), a bohemian Russian dissident (“Limonov: The Ballad”), a beleaguered junior doctor (“This Is Going to Hurt”), a flawed English king (“Richard II”) and Rolling Stones axe man Keith Richards (“Stoned”). Whishaw has made impossible any attempt at categorization.
He has won two Emmys, three BAFTA TV awards, but they don’t really do justice to his rich career.
In Black Doves, he played a shotgun-toting, brain-on-wall-splattering assassin who happens to be gay. “I’m quite fascinated in how much has changed in the 20 years since I started acting, Playing an openly gay hit man would never have been option when Whishaw first emerged from RADA in 2003 aged 22 (and broke out in 2024 for his Olivier-nominated performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic).
“There were not roles like this … there were not depictions of queer people like this,” he says. “Now you can play someone who’s not straight, but it’s not their defining characteristic — that person might have many other interesting facets. And those people can be the center of a story that appeals to large audience. that’s new!”
Whishaw came out in 2014, two years into a civil partnership with composer Mark Bradshaw, with whom he split in 2022. But he was actually advised early on to keep his sexuality under wraps.
“I remember it was conveyed to me clearly that you should keep it a bit hush-hush that you’re gay and not to make much of a thing about it,” he recalls. “Even though I wasn’t hiding it from my friends or the people in my life, it was something to be hidden and you had to pass for straight. But if you wanted to get roles, that was what was required of you.”
The advice came from other actors and was offered “with care,” with “an eye on the reality of the situation at the time.” Ian McKellen, Simon Callow, Simon Russell Beale and Rupert Everett were the only prominent openly gay actors in the U.K.
“And I think that was it — it was a pretty tiny proportion. I can’t think of anyone who was my age,” says Whishaw. “So I do really want to acknowledge the bravery and brilliance of those people, because it wasn’t nothing that we had them to look up to. And I’m grateful that we’ve moved on from that time, because it felt horrible.”
Ben Whishaw as Q in “Skyfall”
Times have thankfully changed, to the extent that in the 2021 James Bond hit “No Time to Die” — the latest installment of a franchise that had previously failed to even acknowledge the existence of anyone that wasn’t heterosexual — it was revealed that Q is gay. However historic, it was just a fleeting mention in one scene and never referenced again.
If and how Q’s sexuality is explored further remains to be seen, but Whishaw suspects it won’t be with him in the role.
“I would like to, because I think it could be fun to have some crossover, but I wonder if they might just begin all over again and recast the whole thing,” he says. As for the question it’s practically illegal not to ask, he says the next Bond should be “someone unexpected, from the left field — I don’t think Daniel Craig was necessarily the go-to person when the job became available. It was a shock.”
Despite playing an iconic role in one of the world’s biggest film franchises, Whishaw has managed to remain out of the public eye. For an actor of his caliber and acclaim, he has one of the lowest profiles going.
“I would rather be even more low-profile,” he says, “I’d be happy not to do anything other than work, if I’m honest.”
Such shyness and aversion to fame only adds to Whishaw’s charm. But he acknowledges it doesn’t sit too well when it comes to crucial promotional activities.
“I don’t particularly like dressing up. I don’t like red carpets. I don’t like having my photo taken. But you have to do it a bit, otherwise people get upset with me.”
