Ben Whishaw — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Ben Whishaw was born in Clifton, Bedfordshire, on 14 October 1980, one of twin sons of Linda Whishaw, née Hope, who worked in cosmetics, and Jose Whishaw, who worked in sport with young people. He grew up in Clifton and neighbouring Langford and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2003.
The family name is not the one it started with. His paternal grandfather was born Jean Vladimir Stellmacher in Istanbul in 1922, to a German father who was stationed there and a Russian mother. The couple moved to Kassel in Germany, where the boy grew up and was educated. During the Second World War, while serving in the German army, he was recruited through a contact at the British embassy to work for the British, and after joining them in Cairo he took the name John Victor Whishaw. His children learned of his wartime life only shortly before his death in 1994, when his widow, Olga, told them. Whishaw's aunt later took back the name Stellmacher; his father kept Whishaw.
The Russian great-grandmother is the family's link to the Russian world, and her name and place of origin are not recorded in published sources. In the early 1920s Istanbul held a large community of refugees from the Russian Civil War; whether she was among them is not known.
A year after leaving RADA, Whishaw played Hamlet in Trevor Nunn's production at the Old Vic in London, at twenty-three. His film roles include Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), the poet John Keats in Bright Star (2009) and Q in the James Bond films from Skyfall (2012) onward, and he has been the voice of Paddington Bear since 2014.
On television he won the British Academy Television Award for Leading Actor for Richard II in The Hollow Crown, and for his part as Norman Scott in A Very English Scandal (2018) he received a Golden Globe and an Emmy. He won a second BAFTA Television Award for Leading Actor for This Is Going to Hurt (2022). On Broadway he appeared in The Crucible in 2016.
"Grandfather born in Istanbul in 1922 and raised in Kassel, Germany; later settled in Britain"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Istanbul (Turkey)
His paternal grandfather was born Jean Vladimir Stellmacher in Istanbul in 1922 to a German father and a Russian mother, and took the name John Victor Whishaw during the Second World War. The Russian great-grandmother's name and place of origin are not recorded.
Great-grandson, through his paternal grandfather Jean Vladimir Stellmacher (born in Istanbul in 1922), of a Russian woman whose name and place of origin are not recorded.
.svg?width=900)
Istanbul (Turkey). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.