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 KINGSLEYWhen 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 KINGSLEYI 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.
BEN KINGSLEYThey’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
BEN KINGSLEYAs a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.
BEN KINGSLEYWhen 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 KINGSLEYI 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.
BEN KINGSLEYFamily is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don’t have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody.
BEN KINGSLEYI have never felt bereft of anything.
BEN KINGSLEYThe trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
BEN KINGSLEYI’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 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 KINGSLEYThe number of choices you make in the event that you see on stage, those choices are sometimes largely determined by the rehearsal process and the experiments that you go through and the choices that you make in the rehearsal room, not in front of an audience.
BEN KINGSLEYFilming 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 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 KINGSLEYIf it’s a really well written villain, he probably has more layers than the archetypal good person. So that would be very attractive to an actor. No one chooses to be a villain; it’s usually a reaction to something else.
BEN KINGSLEYIf 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