When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
BEN KINGSLEYWhen you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
BEN KINGSLEYIn 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 KINGSLEYI’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 KINGSLEYI 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 KINGSLEYOne 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 KINGSLEYThey’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
BEN KINGSLEYThere have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.
BEN KINGSLEYI do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can’t because they can’t face it.
BEN KINGSLEYI 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 KINGSLEYIt is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.
BEN KINGSLEYMovie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
BEN KINGSLEYThat 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 KINGSLEYYou 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 KINGSLEYI 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 KINGSLEYAll the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEYI have a rather naive approach, I think, to my job.
BEN KINGSLEY