Paul Benjamin Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Carole Ann (Ferguson), a nurse, and Frederick Arthur Oscar Mendelsohn, a medical researcher. Getting his start in television, including The Henderson Kids and the long running soap opera Neighbours, Mendelsohn broke out with his performance as an ill-fated juvenile delinquent in the acclaimed coming of age film The Year My Voice Broke. Mendelsohn won the best supporting actor award from the Australian Film Institute, his first of eight nominations.

Spouse Emma Forrest

Trivia

His paternal grandfather was from a Polish Jewish/German Jewish background, while the rest of his ancestry includes English, Irish, Scottish, Northern Irish, one eighth Greek, and more distant German. Ben found out in the Australian version of the show Who Do You Think You Are? (2008) that his grandfather's ancestors were among the first Prussian Jews to be naturalized in Poland.

Personal Quotes 

For me, it's very important to feel relaxed in the environment, so I will do things to ensure that occurs. And if there is someone vibing me out, I will either attack or flee.
I loved the dogs. One of the reasons that Andrew was so excited about me doing this was because I'm a dog freak. I basically sat around unemployed in Sydney for three years straight and the two things that saved me were the rugby league and my dog.
He would punish me much more than he would anyone else, but he was also nicer to me than anyone else on the set.
I remember the Yearling was the first film I ever saw and my mom told me I cried for about four or five days afterwards. I'd be going along during the day and suddenly start crying over what had happened to the little deer.
I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what The Big Steal and Spotswood were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people. I'd wanna be playing men by now. I'd be in trouble if I wasn't.
I think if you have to kiss or kill someone on screen then it's a good idea to talk about it beforehand, just because it makes it easier to go where you need to go.
[The hardest day on the set of Killing Them Softly] I discovered that if you eat 40 ice creams in a row you get crook. Yeah, that was bad. That scene we did again and again and it was the hottest, baking day. I was incredibly unwell at the end of that day.