So many of the industry's young actors find themselves thrust into the acting spotlight but Ben Whishaw has avoided all of the distractions that come hand in hand with being an actor.
Going slightly under the radar he has built up a great body of work making him one of the most talented British actors working today.
The twenty nine year old kicked off his acting career in the Big Spirit theatre company, after taking Of This Is A Man to the Edinburgh Film Festival they gained rave reviews for their performances.
He slowly moved into TV and short movies at the end of the nineties with the likes of Other People's Children and Baby under his belt.
By 2004 he was on the stage, this time at the Old Vic, for a production of Hamlet, as the youngest ever Hamlet, and his performance gained good reviews and he once again caught everybody's eye.
Over the next couple of years he juggled movie, TV as well as theatre as he appearing alongside Daniel Craig in both Enduring Love and Layer Cake gaining experience as he went.
But it was for his stage work that he was still best known, after receiving award nominations for his performance in Hamlet before causing a storm in the controversial show Mercury Fur.
The play was an apocalyptic drama which centred around the planned sacrifice of a child. Despite all the fuss on the stage his movie career was beginning to flourish.
He led the cast in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which was based on the novel Perfume by Patrick Süskind before joining the ensemble cast of I'm Not There.
Directed by Todd Hayes the British actor was one of six different actors that were cast to portray several incarnations of the groundbreaking musical Bob Dylan.
Whishaw took on the role of Arthur in the movie, a Rimbaud-esque figure who has begun to embrace a new form of lyrical poetry.
He enjoyed major success on the small screen next with the Bafta Award winning Criminal Justice. He starred as Ben Coulter, a young man who is accused of murder after a drunken and drug-filled night out. However he is unable to remember committing the crime.
For his performance Ben was nominated for a Bafta Award.
It was back to movies next with Brideshead Revisited and then The International with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.
This week he returns to the big screen in Bright Star. Set in 1818 and a secret love affair begins between 23-year-old English poet John Keats and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion.
This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she unimpressed by literature in general.
But when Keats's younger brother falls ill John and Fanny are drawn together. Keats, touched by Fanny's efforts to help care for his brother, agrees to teach her poetry.
By the time Fanny's alarmed mother (Kerry Fox) and Keats's best friend Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider) realize their attachment.
But their relationship was cut tragically short by Keats's death at the age of twenty five.
In the pipeline of the actor is a big screen adaptation of The Tempest, in which he will play Ariel, which is out next year.
Bright Star is released 6th November
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Ben Whishaw