Words: Eleanor
Photography: Greg Williams
Before he started covering magazines, playing world leaders such as Obama and Malcolm X, starring in everything from Peaky Blinders to Marvel’s next big TV series and being nominated for a BAFTA, Kingsley Ben-Adir had made a local name for himself for something a little more peculiar than acting.
At nine years old, he received 15 riot policemen and the fire brigade at his home in Kentish Town, after they had been tipped off by terrified locals that a “bird-eating spider” had been let loose and was on the run. The tarantula, named Charlotte, was in fact Ben-Adir’s pet, and once found, was whisked up to the London Zoo, where Ben-Adir’s mother duly collected it the next morning, while her son’s face beamed off the front page of the Camden New Journal.
“I only saw it eat locusts to be fair,” laughs the 35-year-old actor over Zoom, his six-foot-three frame elegantly suited in all-white Brunello Cucinelli finished with a Chopard L.U.C Perpetual Chrono. Fresh from a morning dip in the Mediterranean, he’s sitting on a rooftop in sunny Cannes, having just been awarded the prestigious Trophée Chopard for rising talent alongside Jessie Buckley. Previous recipients include Marion Cotillard and Florence Pugh, who both went on to win Oscars just a couple of years later.
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