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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.

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

Ends Knows Rhythm
I’m so dependent on reacting to the other actors on the set, and to the director. I’m very responsive. I react. And I treasure the energy that reaction gives.
BEN KINGSLEY

Directors Energy Giving
I think that most actors attempt to keep in touch with the child.
BEN KINGSLEY

Acting Children Thinking
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

People Speak World
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

Hunters Jaguar Looks
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Boat Hours Miles
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEY

Behaviour Character Roots
I’m very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEY

Acting Cameras Love
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Film Light Profound
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

Fish Play Tank Three
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Ease Flesh Longing
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

Blood Powerful Real
We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they’re good actors.
BEN KINGSLEY

Actor Change Rhythm
You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.
BEN KINGSLEY

Forgiving Lesson Profound
But comedy I’d love to do as much as humanly possible.
BEN KINGSLEY

Comedy Human Possible
The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.
BEN KINGSLEY

Class Hierarchy London
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

Art Fun Thinking
I didn’t go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey.
BEN KINGSLEY

Couple Drama Job
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

Musical Term Trying
With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It’s a good exercise to do.
BEN KINGSLEY

Accurate Exercise Voice
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

Camera Exercise Focus
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!
BEN KINGSLEY

Acting Camera Doe
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

Actors Stars Yellow
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Falling Idiot Love Men
John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.
BEN KINGSLEY

Country Song Stars Writing
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

Awards Let Go Wife
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

Choices Long Wish

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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