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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 Kingsley

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

Drama Home Loyalty
I don’t want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away.
BEN KINGSLEY

Actors Tiptoes Want
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
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

Actors Responsibility Wonderful
There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.
BEN KINGSLEY

Assurance Regard Trough
I 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 KINGSLEY

Arms Embrace Villain
There is so much to do on a film set. It is an extraordinarily invigorating and wonderful place to be, when things are running well.
BEN KINGSLEY

Film Running Wonderful
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
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
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
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
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
As an actor there’s no autonomy, unless you’re prepared to risk the possibility of starving.
BEN KINGSLEY

Actors Possibility Risk
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
BEN KINGSLEY

Behaviour Character Roots
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
Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
BEN KINGSLEY

Astonishing Hamlet Intelligence

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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