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 KINGSLEYHopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.
More Ben Kingsley Quotes
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But comedy I’d love to do as much as humanly possible.
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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.
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When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
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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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If 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.
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The 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.
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If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
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I just loved playing a man who was unafraid of making an idiot of himself in the process of falling in love. I found that admirable.
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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.
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I’ve never had to turn my hand to anything for monetary gain, other than pretending to be somebody else. I’m deeply fortunate.
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Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.
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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.
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I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.
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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.
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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.
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The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!
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I have never felt bereft of anything.
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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.
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I’m very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.
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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.
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My line-learning is very special. I like to learn the dialogue of the whole film before I arrive.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Shock is shock. Your body goes into shock, regardless of it being real blood or fake blood. The mind sends powerful messages to all the various glands and secretions in the body. It’s impossible trying to act it; it just happens. It’s a very important question: no acting.
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I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.
BEN KINGSLEY