I don’t want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away.
BEN KINGSLEYI’ve met quite a number of people in my career, but I do have an extraordinary memory. And even though they may drift into the periphery of my memory, I can bring them right back when I need them.
More Ben Kingsley Quotes
-
-
I hope I’m able to achieve more on camera through stillness, through focus, through being quite careful to do less on every take, rather than more. So I’m reducing, rather than adding. Which hopefully is a good exercise. That’s what I’d like to do.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I think I’m more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I’m waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.
BEN KINGSLEY -
The leaping Jaguar on the bonnet, to me, makes it look more like a hunter than something that is getting away. It’s a hunter. Richard III definitely would have had a chauffeur driven Jaguar MK X.
BEN KINGSLEY -
If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.
BEN KINGSLEY -
Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.
BEN KINGSLEY -
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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 -
As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.
BEN KINGSLEY -
What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it’s a science. It’s neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I’m open to any project, but my joyful projects are those through which I can say something and through which I can speak to the an audience of people in the world, and I can be that vehicle through which something can be said, I find that entirely thrilling and joyful.
BEN KINGSLEY -
You need particular note or rhythm in the symphony to be that minor key, or that sharp key or major chord. In musical terms, I try to hit the right note. But not alter the score of the music, just emphasize the note correctly.
BEN KINGSLEY -
Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
Shock is shock. Your body goes into shock, regardless of it being real blood or fake blood. The mind sends powerful messages to all the various glands and secretions in the body. It’s impossible trying to act it; it just happens. It’s a very important question: no acting.
BEN KINGSLEY -
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.
BEN KINGSLEY -
I have never felt bereft of anything.
BEN KINGSLEY