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
I'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.
It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.
I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.
As an actor there's no autonomy, unless you're prepared to risk the possibility of starving.
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.
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.
We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.
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.
They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
I use my intuition, my imagination, my voice and my body. That is really what actors do. There is a lot of nonsense talked about acting, but really all we do is use our voice, our body, our imaginations to create portraits about people so that you and the audience can be pulled into beautiful stories.
Ever since I did Sexy Beast in 1999 my career has been very busy and very rewarding. It's a wonderful time for me,
Quite often when I'm cast in a movie, I'm asked to bring whatever intelligence is there to the surface.
Everything that's made me what I am today is part of that process of being intrigued and curious. But I really couldn't put my finger on any specific trigger from my childhood.
The title is the equivalent of when you become a doctor after years of medical school training... I suppose after years of chewing up the furniture and scenery on stage and in films I get to Sir for being a thespian.