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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

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
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
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Actors Theatre Years
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
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
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Children Thinking Trying
There are some directors, lesser in confidence or skill, who make the actor feel very uncomfortable because you feel you’re auditioning for them, every day, and that’s a terrible feeling on the set.
BEN KINGSLEY

Director Feelings Skills
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Children People Thinking
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
As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.
BEN KINGSLEY

Alive Singers Thieves
There’s so much crap talked about acting.
BEN KINGSLEY

Acting Crap Talk
Equal partners aren’t always what we envision as being manifestly equal. Equality can come in many different shapes and sizes and combinations.
BEN KINGSLEY

Different Shapes Size
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
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
BEN KINGSLEY

Creative Creativity Trying
If you are a libertine, if you’re not given to long-term faithful relationships, you tend to project your behavior onto everyone else. It’s like the person who knows they’re not trustworthy; they tend to mistrust everyone else.
BEN KINGSLEY

Faithful Long Trustworthy
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

People Style Thinking
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
Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.
BEN KINGSLEY

Children Empowering Needs
In order to inhabit a villain, you mustn’t care what the audience think of you. That’s not why you are there. You mustn’t care for a second whether the audience likes you or dislikes you. Your villain has to be way beyond that.
BEN KINGSLEY

Care Order Thinking
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 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

Father Son Uplifting
The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
BEN KINGSLEY

Character Men Trying
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
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEY

Behaviour Character Roots
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
There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.
BEN KINGSLEY

Assurance Regard Trough
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.
BEN KINGSLEY

Country Disappeared Fog Taken

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.

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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.

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