Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley is an English actor. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has won an Oscar, Grammy, BAFTA, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He is known for his starring role as Mohandas Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also known for his performances in the films Schindler's List, Twelfth Night, Sexy Beast, Lucky Number Slevin, Shutter Island, Prince of Persia: The...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 December 1943
CitySnainton, England
There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There's never been a trough of my assurance.
They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.
I think the actor has a tribal role as the archetypal story teller. I think there was a time when the storyteller, the priest, the healer, were all one person in one body. That person used to weave stories at night around a small fire to keep the tribe from being terrified that sun had gone down.
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.
I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.
Unfortunately I went to a hotel in Krakow, and unfortunately, one night, there was a brawl in the bar because a horrible anti-Semitic remark was made to one of my fellow Israeli actors, one of my fellow actors who was an Israeli, sorry, and we were all extremely upset. I reacted rather violently, I'm afraid.
Somewhere in your career, your work changes. It becomes less anal, less careful and more spontaneous, more to do with the information that your soul carries.
There's always a part of me that's migrating. That's so much part of my attempt to portray all these different men. The sense of being displaced from my home, homeland and language is a very real part of my working life.
I think that the stamina, the marathon stamina that you required of your actor, I probably developed on great texts during my Shakespeare tenancy, if you like.
I think a great director is able to conclude things with grace... and I remember Gandhi ending in a very similar way.
I just try to do the things that I respond to, that just grab me when I read them for whatever reason. It's hard to put your finger on it.
I like to do one or two films a year. But I can't prepare for something until I know what it's going to be. So I find that doing some narration, or maybe a documentary, is like going back into the gym for a couple of days.
I may return to the stage, but not in the foreseeable future.