Kingsley was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, the son of actor Ben Kingsley and theatre Director Alison Sutcliffe. His paternal grandfather, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji (1914–1968), was a Kenyan-born medical Doctor of Gujarati Indian (Ismaili Muslim Khoja) descent. His great-grandfather was an extremely successful spice trader who had moved from India to Zanzibar, where his grandfather lived until moving to England at the age of 14. Kingsley's paternal grandmother was English; she was born out of wedlock, and "was loath to speak of her background". His other great-grandfather was believed by the family to have been of either German-Jewish or Russian-Jewish descent, while his great-grandmother was English and worked in the garment district of East London.

Kingsley's theatre credits include Troilus and Cressida, and Little Eyolf for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He played Rosencrantz in the National Theatre's 2010–11 production of Hamlet, for which he received a commendation at the 2010 Ian Charleson Awards, and Phaeax in Welcome to Thebes.

He played both Jesus and God the Father in the August 2012 production of the York Mystery Plays. In 2013, Kingsley played the part of murdered Jewish anarchist Joshua Bloom in the BBC period crime drama Ripper Street, and filmed prominent roles in Agatha Christie's Poirot: Elephants Can Remember, the BBC feature film The Whale as Obed Hendricks, and Universal Pictures' 2014 feature Dracula Untold as Hamza Bey. In Spring 2013, Kingsley starred in the short film Dance in Colour by The Crookes. In 2016 Kingsley starred in ITV's eight-part drama Victoria.