Paul Benjamin "Ben" Mendelsohn (born 3 April 1969) is an Australian actor, known for his work in the films Animal Kingdom, The Dark Knight Rises, Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, Starred Up, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Lost River. Mendelsohn currently stars in the Netflix series Bloodline, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Biography

Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia, the son of Carole Ann (née Ferguson) and Frederick Arthur Oscar Mendelsohn. His father is a prominent medical researcher who heads the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne. Ben and his two brothers, Tom and David, as well as his mother (deceased), a registered nurse, lived in Europe and the US for long periods of time, and returned to Melbourne in high school. He attended Heidelberg Primary School and Eltham High & Banyule High Schools. He took drama because he thought it was an easy class, and was the only one of his friends to follow up an audition for Crawford Productions which was being advertised.

In October 2009, Mendelsohn was featured in the Australian series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing the ancestry of his paternal grandfather, who was from a Jewish family. Searching for a connection to composer Felix Mendelssohn, which was eventually dismissed, he discovered links to 19th-century Prussia. His ancestors were amongst the first Prussian Jews to be naturalised in Schneidemühl in the province of Posen, now Piła in modern Poland.

Mendelsohn married British author Emma Forrest in June, 2012. Has two daughters, one with Forrest born in 2014 and one from a previous relationship.

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