Portraits of Ben

Because Ben Whishaw does the weirdest photo shoots

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@ingaweiss asks: Hi, I would like to hear your story about this picture!

This was actually one of the first Portraits of Ben that portraitsofben ever commented on! In short: old potholders, blind grandmother.

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Ben rehearses for his upcoming West End performance in “James and the Giant Nipple.”

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They found the portrait in the back room of an antique shop, under a sheet covered in a thick layer of dust. It had no artist’s name, no year; the owner of the antique shop, a woman in her eighties, said that it had probably been there when she took over the store from her uncle in the 1960s. She didn’t venture into the back room much; it was a couple of steps down and her hips wouldn’t cooperate.

They bought it, for some reason. It was too intriguing to pass up: the ageless, timeless boy (man?); looking off to the side in melancholy, or perhaps deep in thought. They hung it in the den with their other strange finds.

Sometimes, out of the corner of their eyes, they could swear they saw movement. Sometimes a cold draft inexplicably blew through the room. Sometimes their cat would spend hours staring at the portrait for no apparent reason.

One day one of their siblings stopped by, concerned that she hadn’t heard from them in a while. They were gone. All she found was their cat, staring at a portrait of them with a strange man (boy?) she’d never seen before.

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Coco Chanel famously said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take at least one thing off.”

Less widely known is the second half of that quotation: “Unless you’re Ben Whishaw, in which case you should probably just start over from scratch.”

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The cover from Ben Whishaw’s little-known 90s punk album.

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"Ugh, my period’s coming soon.”

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Promo photo for the BBC’s newest miniseries, Ben Whishaw Doesn’t Know What Day It Is.

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Ben reenacts Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting, Washington Half-Standing on a Stack of Old Magazines While Absent-Mindedly Chewing on a Hangnail.

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“Oh, for— guys, Ben has his hand stuck in his hair again. What did I tell you about trying to run your fingers through your hair, Ben? Someone get the scissors.”

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“That cloud looks like a cat. That one also looks like a cat. That one looks like existential despair. That one looks like a smaller cat.”

[dragontara]

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Hair by Dr. Seuss. Clothing by the Golden Girls wardrobe department. Accessories by that guy from The Silence of the Lambs who turns women into a skin suit.

[hiddleston-whishaw]

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I don’t actually have a snarky comment to make about this one, because he looks fantastic. I mean, his sweater looks like he stole it from a Depression-era dockworker, but other that, everything’s good.

[portraitsofben]

Ben is not impressed by your egg-peeling abilities.

[portraitsofben]

ur icon is perfect. how'd you get that incredible likeness to ben??

I drew it! I’m glad you like it!

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To be honest, if a photo like this came up as I was perusing Tinder, I wouldn’t just swipe left, I would destroy my phone with a hammer and throw it into a river.