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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

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
Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
BEN KINGSLEY

Act Acting Magic Movie
Sometimes it’s right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.
BEN KINGSLEY

Reality Sometimes Truth
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
When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
BEN KINGSLEY

Acting Film Lazy
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
Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
BEN KINGSLEY

Astonishing Hamlet Intelligence
I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I’m waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.
BEN KINGSLEY

Honest Scripts Waiting
It’s Sir Ben. I’ve not been a Mister for two years.
BEN KINGSLEY

Hollywood Two Years
The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.
BEN KINGSLEY

May Pregnancy Together
I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.
BEN KINGSLEY

Character Play Trying
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
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
You don’t go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that’s benign conquest. It’s a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.
BEN KINGSLEY

Culture Landscape Other Play
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
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
BEN KINGSLEY

Death Friendship Girlfriend Life
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
There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.
BEN KINGSLEY

Assurance Regard Trough
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEY

Behaviour Character Roots
The biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age.
BEN KINGSLEY

Age Aging Men
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 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
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
BEN KINGSLEY

Creative Creativity Trying
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
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 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
I think I’m more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
BEN KINGSLEY

Destiny Stories Thinking

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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