Skandar Keynes

Skandar Keynes (born Alexander Amin Casper Keynes; 5 September 1991) is a British actor. He is best known for starring as Edmund Pevensie in the Chronicles of Narnia film series since 2005. He has appeared in all three installments, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and most recently The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was released on 10 December 2010. --- Keynes was born in London, the son of Zelfa Hourani and author Randal Keynes. He has an older sister, Soumaya Anne Keynes (born August 1989), who has appeared in various productions for BBC Radio 4. On his mother's side, Keynes is of Lebanese, Persian and Turkish descent. (The nickname Skandar is Pashto for the Greek name "Alexander", Pashto being an Afghan language like Persian, or is short for "Iskander," an Arabic variant.) Keynes is denied the right to Lebanese citizenship, as Lebanese women are not allowed to pass their nationality on to their children, thus he has no right to the nation's public services, or to legally receive his family inheritance in the country he considers his second home. His maternal grandparents were Furugh Afnan and Cecil Fadlo Hourani, who was an advisor to the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, as well as an author; Cecil Hourani is also the brother of Albert Hourani, a major historian of the Middle East. Cecil's family were immigrants to Britain from Marjeyoun in southern Lebanon. On his father's side, Keynes is the grandson of physiologist Richard Keynes, the nephew of two Cambridge professors, the historian Simon Keynes, and the neuroscientist Roger Keynes, the cousin of Catholic writer and apologist Laura Keynes, and the great-great-nephew of economist John Maynard Keynes. His great-great-great-grandfather was naturalist Charles Darwin. Keynes' great-grandparents were Nobel Prize laureate Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian and Hester Adrian, Baroness Adrian. --- Keynes auditioned for the role of Edmund Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the same time as he auditioned for the role of Simon Brown in Nanny McPhee, winning the former while losing the latter to Thomas Sangster. His voice changed, due to puberty, during the filming of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, so the director used his sister Soumaya to voice some of his lines in the movie. He reprised his role as Edmund in Prince Caspian, released 16 May 2008. Keynes told an interviewer, who praised him for becoming "an action hero," that he "felt so cheated because one of my very first action scenes was the very beginning of the battle when I run and I jump off a block and get on a horse as it's going by. On one take I missed the horse. I basically didn't manage to land on it but I managed to hold on and I was flung around and almost smacked into one of those stone columns. I slammed on the ground and bruised my heel so badly that I couldn't walk on it and it was throbbing constantly. I had to do the rest of the battle with a bruised heel. Sometimes if you watch my running it looks a bit odd; I wonder if other people notice it or if it's just me noticing! I had to do a lot of that sequence high on pain medication!" They also discussed his relationships with the other cast and crew members. He starred again as Edmund in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment of The Chronicles of Narnia film series. Filming began in July 2009, and finished in December of the same year. The film was released on 10 December 2010 in Britain and the US. In preparation for this film, Keynes studied to earn his Professional Association of Diving Instructors license for underwater scenes. --- Keynes is an atheist. Keynes attended the Anna Scher Theatre School from 2000 to 2005, having attended Thornhill Primary School from 1996–2002. He attended the all-boys City of London School from 2005. There he wrote as a film critic for the review section of The Citizen, the City of London School weekly school newspaper. He sat his GCSEs in May and June 2008 and started Sixth Form and his first year of his A-level studies the following September. He studied biology, chemistry, maths, further maths and history at A-level. In October 2010 he began his degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern History at Pembroke College, Cambridge.