Ben Mendelsohni

Biography:

Actor Paul Benjamin Mendelsohn was born in Australia on April 3, 1969. His breakthrough performance in The Year My Voice Broke (1987) catapulted him to fame in Australia. His leading performance in the crime drama Animal Kingdom (2010) brought him international recognition. Since then, he has starred in movies including Ready Player One (2018), Mississippi Grind (2015), Starred Up (2013), Lost River (2014), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Darkest Hour (2017).

Mendelsohn won the 2016 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his role in the Netflix drama series Bloodline, which ran from 2015 to 2017. He played Orson Krennic in the Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One that same year. He would subsequently play the same character again in the second season of the show’s companion series Andor (2025). In Robin Hood (2018), he portrayed the Sheriff of Nottingham. In the Disney+ series Secret Invasion (2023) and the superhero movie Captain Marvel (2019), he made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Talos.  Additionally, he starred in The Outsider (2020), an HBO crime miniseries. He started playing fashion designer Christian Dior in the TV show The New Look in 2024.

The son of Frederick Arthur Oscar Mendelsohn and Carole Ann (née Ferguson), Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Victoria. His father, a well-known medical researcher, is currently Professor Emeritus at the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne, where he was the institute’s director.  Ben spent a lot of time in Europe and the US with his two brothers, Tom and David, and his mother, a registered nurse, who passed away. He returned to Melbourne while he was in elementary school. Prior to attending Heidelberg Primary School, Eltham High School, and Banyule High (now Viewbank College), he attended Mercersburg Academy in the United States. He believed that drama was a simple class, so he enrolled in it.