What Narnia child star is doing now after leaving Hollywood for very different life
Skandar Keynes took a pretty unexpected career path after rising to fame as Edmund Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia movies.
Born in London in 1991 to British author Randal Keynes and Lebanese mother Zelfa Hourani, Keynes comes from one of Britain's most distinguished families, counting Charles Darwin and economist John Maynard Keynes among his ancestors.
After years working as a child actor, Keynes left Hollywood behind and spent the past decade or so working in politics and public policy.
Now 34, Keynes has built a career focused on international affairs, as well as having made use of learning a new language.
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Following his last appearance in the Narnia franchise in 2010, he studied Arabic, Persian and Middle Eastern History at Pembroke College in Cambridge, graduating with a Double First Class degree in 2014.
His studies took him to Lebanon for a year, where he fully immersed himself in village life to improve his Arabic.
Writing about the experience for The Tab, Keynes joked that locals thought of him as the ‘village idiot’ because he wasn’t as fluent as he thought.
“But, despite being on the receiving end of a healthy humbling, I shall not be disheartened,” he penned some nine years ago.
“Indeed, my little red book is slowly but surely filling up, and I’m getting better at the game, ‘see how long we can swear at the idiot before he realises’.
“The other day I even managed to convince a rather patient man in Arabic that the Queen was not behind a conspiracy to kill Princess Diana – or so I hope I did.”
After university, Keynes did a three-month internship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Jordan, helping research the living conditions of Syrian refugees.
His work contributed to the organisation's Living in the Shadows report, which examined the challenges faced by almost 150,000 refugees living outside camps.
He then moved into British politics, working as a parliamentary adviser to Conservative MP Crispin Blunt from 2015 until 2018.
The role saw him accompany parliamentary delegations on visits across the Middle East, while contributing to discussions on regional security and foreign policy.
Since leaving Parliament, Keynes is believed to have continued working as a political adviser.
Although he has largely stayed out of the public eye, Keynes is fondly remembered by fans of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Away from work, he is also a lifelong Arsenal supporter - make of that what you will.
Anish Vij