Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn't there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can't.
Ben Kingsley
- More quotations by Actor
Ben Kingsley quotes
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I'd still be alive by now.
As an actor there's no autonomy, unless you're prepared to risk the possibility of starving.
Being a leading man on a film set under the direction of somebody like Dickie Attenborough is very empowering, and you have to be extremely careful how you use that power.
But comedy I'd love to do as much as humanly possible.
But filming is good for you, because the crew isn't allowed to laugh. You can't get addicted to getting the laugh.
Everything that's made me what I am today is part of that process of being intrigued and curious. But I really couldn't put my finger on any specific trigger from my childhood.
Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It's harder.
Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn't there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can't.
Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn't going to work.
I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.
I do have a massive curiosity.
I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.
I don't honestly think people know what acting is.
I have a rather naive approach, I think, to my job.
I have done three makeup tests and I'm very, very happy with them. I am completely unrecognizable.
I have never felt bereft of anything.
I have no misconceptions about my dentist because when I go to my dentist I see what he does... Nobody can really understand the process of acting because... we don't want them to.
I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I'm waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.
I just loved playing a man who was unafraid of making an idiot of himself in the process of falling in love. I found that admirable.
I just try to do the things that I respond to, that just grab me when I read them for whatever reason. It's hard to put your finger on it.
I knew India not at all. I mean, I had never been before in my life.
I love creatures in their pure form.
I may return to the stage, but not in the foreseeable future.
I might be asked to make an emotional expression which is me being absolutely, absolutely still and making maybe one movement, and there it is.
I think a great director is able to conclude things with grace... and I remember Gandhi ending in a very similar way.
I think I'm more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.
I think one of my main moments of inspiration was when I was about 5.
I think Romeo and Juliet is uplifting. That's how much a son wishes to avenge his father. That is how much two young people can love each other.
I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it's such an extraordinary part of our lives.
I think that most actors, and they're a very strange lot actors, very strange people, but I think that they attempt to keep in touch with the child.
I think that the stamina, the marathon stamina that you required of your actor, I probably developed on great texts during my Shakespeare tenancy, if you like.
I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don't understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.
I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.
I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.
I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
I was fortunate as a young actor, to go straight to the RSC, where I learned that being an actor can bring with it wonderful responsibilities.
I was very lazy in the sixth form at school, I wasn't motivated properly, I handled it very badly and I was not given a place at university to study medicine.
I would like to make it known, on this program, loud and clear, that I would absolutely embrace with all five of my arms being a Bond villain.
I'm a hopping maniac, and if I didn't have that disciplined channel to pour this maniacal energy into, I'd probably go berserk.
I'm convinced that had I not changed my name, I don't think I would have had quite the same career curve that I eventually had.
I'm holding a mirror to the audience and telling them there is a violent person in all of us.
I'm not very good at analysing past strategies and choices.
I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.
I've met holocaust survivor victims, through other films, and I know what survivor guilt is like.
I've never had to turn my hand to anything for monetary gain, other than pretending to be somebody else. I'm deeply fortunate.
If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.
If people are generous with their information, then the actor can use that information lovingly and respectfully.
If we hit the collective nerve of the audience on that night, that they would be standing up and rushing towards the stage to hug us.
If you start to victimise yourself, as an unworthy component in a beautifully constructed machine, that component is going to fail the machinery.
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
In cinema, the leading player is the director.
In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me.
It doesn't get any easier. I still get very nervous and excited, but I'm hoping... what I'm trying to do is simplify. That's what I'm trying to do.
It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.
It's always very touching when you find a character on the screen who is fiercely defending your character.
John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.
Moses had a very bad stammer. Aaron often had to speak for Moses when he was in front of the pharaoh and could not articulate.
Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.
Quite often when I'm cast in a movie, I'm asked to bring whatever intelligence is there to the surface.
Sometimes, you know, one is distracted by a bad print or a bad sound quality.
Somewhere in your career, your work changes. It becomes less anal, less careful and more spontaneous, more to do with the information that your soul carries.
That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere.
The astonishing silences in a Tarkovsky film... can sweep you into screen and... you don't want to end.
The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!
The Dostoevsky in Russia is very alive.
The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.
The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.
The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There's never been a trough of my assurance.
There is a lot of creative energy in me right now. In the work I'm now doing, I know that my soul-my soul-is fully articulate.
There is so much to do on a film set. It is an extraordinarily invigorating and wonderful place to be, when things are running well.
There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word.
There's so much crap talked about acting.
We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.
Well, it's wonderful to be identified strongly with my work.
What we have in Shakespeare is a very, very early form of device which today in screenplay is the BCU-big close up.
When Attenborough asked me to do Gandhi it was almost like stepping off one boat and stepping on to another, even though both boats are going at 60 miles per hour.
When I choose a role it's either because I recognise the man, or that I'm very curious to know him. If I neither recognise nor know him, then it is better that I don't play him.
When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.
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