He’s so vers! Ben Whishaw is one of the most underrated actors working today

Seeing that Ben Whishaw is in the movie you’re about to see is the very definition of reassuring. No matter what happens with this motion picture, you know one element will be firing on all cylinders. Whishaw is one of the most consistently impressive actors in Hollywood… yet he never seems to get the roses he deserves. The out gay 45-year-old isn’t a household name performer, he’s never won an Oscar (he is halfway to an EGOT though with his Emmy and Golden Globe victories), and he doesn’t have a famous internet fanbase.

Maybe that’s for the best? There isn’t a cloud of hype lingering over Whishaw. His work speaks for itself and boy is it magnificent.

How about we take this to the next level?

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So, why isn’t Ben Whishaw on everyone’s lips as a great modern performer? It’s almost certainly because his performances don’t align with what both mainstream media and the general public consider “prestige” acting. Whishaw doesn’t do Jared Leto-style drastic physical performances for his characters. If he’s playing a historical figure, he’s portraying Peter Hujar or one of many stand-ins for Bob Dylan rather than a US president or a famous musician. His work is quietly devastating while many people only consider loud and brash turns worthy of praise.

Even more important than why Whishaw isn’t as famous as Benedict Cumberbatch, though, are the reasons he’s one of the best modern actors we have. What’s impressive about Whishaw is how he can captivate in even the subtlest ways. In the 2023 film Passages, his character, Martin, has a climactic scene where he finally tells off his toxic partner. This sequence see’s Whishaw absorbing your eyeballs even though his voice never goes much higher than a whisper. He doesn’t have to revel in heavy layers of externalization to vividly portray Martin finally establishing his own autonomy and worthy. The subtlest tweaks in Martin’s body language or the way he’s finally able to keep his gaze centered suggest so much about how much this man has grown.

That gift for shrewd evolutions and variations, not to mention just subtle acting in general, has proven a boon for Whishaw all throughout his career. It allowed him to work like a charm inhabiting a slew of different roles in Cloud Atlas, for instance. It’s also a quality that made his portrait of Peter Hujar in Peter Hujar’s Day so beautifully authentic. Whishaw’s depiction of Hujar over the course of a single day inhabits a movie that’s the very definition of intimate and restrained. Even within these confines, Whishaw’s physicality and line deliveries quietly convey Hujar at varying degrees of cheekiness and introspection. You can learn a lot about somebody just from spending one day with them.

Whishaw’s meticulously layered, but not distractingly showy, vision of Hujar communicates that reality beautifully. It’s also a quality that poignantly reaffirms how Hujar was just a human being. His photography and artistic contributions have turned him into a legend. Whishaw, meanwhile, emphasizes the ordinary in his performance and the tiny ways this eventually mythic individual revealed his innermost emotions.

The other great gift Whishaw brings to the table? He’s remarkable in ensemble cast. Whishaw doesn’t overwhelm a movie with his presence. He leaves a mighty impression while ensuring his fellow actors have their time in the sun. Some of his earliest and enduringly impactful films, I’m Not There and Cloud Atlas, benefited mightily from this gift. One of his greatest performances, August Epp in Women Talking, is the quintessential display of this trait. As the quiet, silently tormented Epp, Whishaw shatters your heart just with his mournful face.

However, he doesn’t overshadow the principal focus of this production, the titular women. This movie belongs to Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, and the other ladies in writer/director Sarah Polley’s screenplay. Whishaw works perfectly within that structure while still making Epp such a remarkable and compellingly multi-faceted character. Not every actor can flourish in this kind of ensemble setting. Whishaw, meanwhile, has made it look so easy throughout his entire career.

Similarly effortless are the ways Whishaw transforms himself for each of his characters without lapsing into “method acting” nonsense. His cigarette-smoking, catty Peter Hujar couldn’t be further removed from the sage, subdued August Epp. His eloquently poetic Robert Frobisher in Cloud Atlas is basically from another planet compared to his adversarial cocky Limping Man in The Lobster. Whishaw musters up entirely new human beings without engaging in showy techniques or flourishes that capsize audiences taking his various characters seriously as people. 

There’s an insightful understanding of how to make individual human being subtly tick within Whishaw’s performances. He grasps how the tiniest intricacies that differentiate people. Such variations make it always a treat to see what outstanding work this actor will deliver next.

Ah, but the case for Ben Whishaw being one of our best and most underrated modern actors can almost entirely come down to one line delivery in a single feature. Whishaw’s voice-over work as Paddington Bear is one of the great merging of famous actor and animated character (right alongside Robin Williams as The Genie and Jack Black as Po). Paddington 2’s heart-shattering ending solidified this fact with a tender reunion between Paddington and his Aunt Lucy. As the two ursine embrace, Whishaw’s Paddington softly whispers in her ear, “happy birthday, Aunt Lucy.”

Whishaw unveils such a devastating and moving delivery of those four words. You can feel in how Paddington whispers this phrase the momentousness of this reunion. It’s also touching how Whishaw’s vocals here (and throughout his Paddington career) are not condescending or modulated for “a kid’s movie.” He’s saying this line with as much emotional heft and impact as he would in Women Talking or Peter Hujar’s Day. That’s the beauty of Ben Whishaw. He gives every role his all while leaving a maximum impact in the subtlest terms.

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