Ben Mendelsohn is an Australian actor who was born on April 3, 1969, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to parents Carole Ann and Frederick Arthur Oscar Mendelsohn. He has two brothers named Tom and David and he attended Heidelberg Primary School, Eltham High, and Banyule High schools. Ironically, Mendelsohn first took a drama class because he thought it would be easy but he soon found out he enjoyed acting. He was featured in an October 2009 episode of the Australian television series "Who Do You Think You Are?".

The show seeks to trace the ancestry of participants and Mendelsohn learned his paternal grandfather was from a Jewish family and his mother's side was full of convicts. He even discovered his family heritage has links to 19th-century Prussia and his ancestors were among the first Prussian Jews to settle in modern Poland. Mendelsohn has enjoyed a successful acting career which began with early television roles in shows such as "The Henderson Kids". His breakout film was in 1987 which earned him the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Supporting Actor in "The Year My Voice Broke". Mendelsohn married British author Emma Forrest in June 2012 and has two daughters.