Kingsley Ben-Adir Laureate of the 2021 Trophée Chopard

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For the 20th anniversary of the Trophée Chopard, Jessica Chastain will present Kingsley Ben-Adir with his award at a ceremony held on Friday 9 July at the Majestic Hotel on La Croisette in Cannes. A look back at the career of a youthful talent poised to take his place amongst the stars.

Thirty-five-year-old Kingsley Ben-Adir was born in London to a pianist father and a Caribbean-born care worker mother and grew up in London’s Kentish Town district. After working for a living in bars as well as in a school with special needs students, he enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama at the age of 21 and studied Shakespeare and Chekhov. He went on to pursue a career in theatre and in TV – where he landed a recurring role as a forensic scientist in Vera and as a military intelligence officer in Peaky Blinders. It was however his Humphrey Bogart-inspired character as a private investigator searching for a missing teenage girl that thrust him to prominence in the second season of one of Netflix's most compelling series, The OA. He subsequently broke Zoë Kravitz's heart in High Fidelity as well as playing a kind of romantic ideal in Love Life with Anna Kendrick. On the big screen, after starring alongside Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, he stole the show in One Night in Miami, a drama nominated for three Oscars this year. In this first film by actress Regina King, first shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, his unprecedented interpretation of Malcolm X as an immensely vulnerable revolutionary leader as well as a father, husband and friend earned him a BAFTA Award nomination. An even more amazing feat given that One Night in Miami was shot at the same time as The Comey Rule series, in which, with his calmly mesmerising charisma, he plays another incredible icon endowed with a diametrically opposed temperament: Barack Obama. In the tradition of the great British actors, this decidedly versatile actor particularly enjoys disappearing into his characters and will soon be seen slipping into the persona of a super villain for the much-heralded upcoming Marvel series Secret Invasion, alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Olivia Colman.