Whishaw debuted on stage as a member of the Bancroft Youth Theatre in the late 1990s (now the Big Spirit Youth Theatre). He received praise from critics after performing in the theater’s staging of Primo Levi’s autobiographical play, If This Is a Man. In 2004, Whishaw received more favorable reviews as a result of his performance as Hamlet, who plays the title character.
Soon after, Whishaw started getting movie roles, such as Keith Richards in the 2005 biography Stoned. He appeared in The Hour and London Spy on television in 2011, and he then played Q in the James Bond movies Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), and No Time to Die (2021).
In the live-action family films Paddington (2014), Paddington 2 (2017), and the animated series The Adventures of Paddington, Whishaw is also well known for providing the voice of Paddington Brown (2019). In May 2018, he costarred with Hugh Grant in the BBC’s limited series A Very English Scandal.
