Born Krishna Pandit Bhanji, in Snainton, Yorkshire, in 1943 — son of Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a doctor of Kenyan-Gujarati Ismaili origin who had moved to England in the 1930s, and Anna Lyna Mary, an English fashion model and actor. Took the stage name in 1966; spent fifteen years in repertory theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company before Richard Attenborough cast him as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1982. The Academy Award for Best Actor followed for that performance, then the BAFTA, then the Golden Globe, then four decades of stage and film work that has not stopped — Schindler's List, Sexy Beast, House of Sand and Fog, Hugo, Iron Man 3, Operation Finale. Knighted in 2002. The diaspora's case study in how a half-Gujarati boy from a Yorkshire seaside town ended up, for one global cinematic generation, being the face of India's independence on screen.