Ben Mendelsohn: 10 greatest movies of all time

Australian actor, Ben Mendelsohn isn’t well known by movie star standards but with a natural talent and intense character portrayals it’s time he became an A-lister

Hunger starved-lean features and a rough exterior, like fresh off an endless fight, centered around two deep-set blue eyes that somehow always look black and can either churn your stomach or hypnotize you. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ben Mendelsohn.

Not exactly the face of a leading man, hence he’s always a glaring menace on screen. Add all that to a thick Australian accent, and you’ve got the perfect “bad guy”. He’s remained for years in the background as villains more interesting than the heroes, low-key stealing the show by staring at the camera and mumbling his lines like a more talented Vin Diesel.

A superstar back on his homeland of Australia, Ben Mendelsohn isn’t nearly as popular in the States. George Clooney or Tom Cruise walk in a room and everyone’s like “oh, look at that, what a masterpiece” and poor Mendelsohn has to run up the walls just to get a fraction of their recognition. It doesn’t help that he’s only appeared in indie films until recent years. With roles in blockbusters like Ready Player One, Rogue One, and the upcoming Captain Marvel, American audiences are finally recognizing his talent, but it took a long time to get there.

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Born in Melbourne, Mendelsohn started acting after he signed up for a drama class as an elective because he thought it be easy. He ended up liking it and became the only one of his classmates to follow up with an audition for Crawford Productions advertised nearby. He joked multiple times that the reason why he always plays villains is because, as an Australian, his ancestors were all criminals.

This was a joke but funny enough turned out to be true when he traced his ancestry in an episode of the Australian series Who Do You Think You Are? Turns out, aside from with being a descendant of the first naturalized Prussian Jews, his mother’s side was primarily convicts dumped on Australia when it was a Penal Colony. Born to play bad, and good at it.

Whether he’s a scoundrel or a sociopath, he’s great at terrifying people. And with that, here’s a list of Ben Mendelsohn’s top ten movies. Just a quick F.Y.I. this is a movie list and therefore won’t include Bloodline. But if I could include Bloodline it’d probably land at number eight (season one only).