Ben Kingsley famous quotes

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thinking #Silence #Cinema

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

#Profound #Forgiving #Lessons

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

#Loyalty #Drama #Home

The leaping Jaguar on the bonnet, to me, makes it look more like a hunter than something that is getting away. It's a hunter. Richard III definitely would have had a chauffeur driven Jaguar MK X.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Hunters #Looks #Jaguars

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

#Years #Theatre #Actors

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Would Be #Actors #Layers

In cinema, the leading player is the director.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Player #Directors #Cinema

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

#Thinking #Order #Care

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

#Children #Fantasy #Remember

Shakespeare villains were extraordinary. Macbeth, Iago, Richard III... They're so richly layered that a British actor would find it almost impossible to create a two-dimensional villain, if he's explored in his early years or continues to explore his Shakespearean heritage. You can almost not judge them, if they're played really well.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Years #Two #Judging

If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Friendship #Girlfriend #Dating

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Night #Thinking #Fire

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 #Rhythm

Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Children #Empowering #Needs

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Falling In Love #Men #Idiot

I never read anything in print about me. It started with not reading reviews and with the greatest respect to my publicist here, I never read interviews. I was there when I gave them. I never read reviews. I was there when I did the jobs - so I'm totally immune. I live in a bubble.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Jobs #Reading #Interviews

I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I'm waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Waiting #Scripts #Honest

I want to play a man in uniform. I've got tremendous respect for that life that they lead. We know so little about it. It's never discussed or talked about, when they come back from battle. I want to examine the choices that have to be made in some terrible times. I'll get to wear a uniform.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Men #Play #Choices

As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I'd still be alive by now.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thieves #Alive #Singers

I never went to drama school. I went straight into the theater. We had the most extraordinary voice teacher. I worked with her when I was starting out in my career. How to place my voice from a very relaxed position was all wonderfully reminiscent of going back to the basics. But I always like to do that with any role that I do, to dismantle it and put it all back together again.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Teacher #Drama #School

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Choices #Scripts #Firsts

I love storytelling. If you strip all the bits away, what you'll find at the center is a storyteller. As I warm to my career and love it more, I have a sense that storytelling is healing, in many ways. You can reach an audience and heal, and by heal, I mean entertain and provoke. It's a wonderful life.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Healing #Mean #Careers

Family is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don't have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Love You #Love Is #Skype

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

#Skills #Feelings #Directors

I think that Shakespeare had his male side and his female side extremely well developed. And this was a great quality of the Elizabethan, all-around Renaissance man. They were not afraid of their male side and their female side co-existing. This somewhere along the line got lost. And then it got misunderstood.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Men #Thinking #Misunderstood

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

Sometimes it's right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Truth #Reality #Sometimes

There's so much crap talked about acting.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Acting #Crap

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

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Lazy #Acting #Film

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Fall #Character #Thinking

John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Song #Writing #London

Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Magic #Acting

It's Sir Ben. I've not been a Mister for two years.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Years #Two #Hollywood

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Stars #Yellow #Actors

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Long #Choices #Wish

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Numbers #Choices #Events

With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Exercise #Voice #Accurate

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

#Men #Play #Roles

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Boat #Hours #Miles

Well, it's wonderful to be identified strongly with my work.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Wonderful #Wells

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Light #Profound #Film

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

The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Men #Age #Aging

They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
-- Ben Kingsley

#People #Acting #Actors

I think that most actors attempt to keep in touch with the child.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Children #Thinking #Acting

I think Romeo and Juliet is uplifting. That's how much a son wishes to avenge his father. That is how much two young people can love each other.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Uplifting #Father #Son

I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thinking #Acting #Might

I think I'm more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Destiny #Thinking #Stories

But comedy I'd love to do as much as humanly possible.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Comedy

I have never felt bereft of anything.
-- Ben Kingsley

I have a rather naive approach, I think, to my job.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Jobs #Thinking #Approach

I don't honestly think people know what acting is.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thinking #People #Acting

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
-- Ben Kingsley

But filming is good for you, because the crew isn't allowed to laugh. You can't get addicted to getting the laugh.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Laughing #Crew

As an actor there's no autonomy, unless you're prepared to risk the possibility of starving.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Risk #Actors #Possibility

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Character #Roots #Behaviour

I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Acting #And Love #Cameras

I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Character #Play #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 #Thinking #People

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

#Responsibility #Actors #Wonderful

I've never had to turn my hand to anything for monetary gain, other than pretending to be somebody else. I'm deeply fortunate.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Hands #Gains #Pretending

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 #Villain #Embrace

In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Taken #Fog #England

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Creativity #Creative #Trying

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

There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There's never been a trough of my assurance.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Assurance #Trough

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Play #Three #Months

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

#Running #Wonderful #Film

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

It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Voice #Actors #Charity

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!
-- Ben Kingsley

#Acting #Cameras #Doe

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.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Powerful #Real #Blood

I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don't understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thinking #People #Style

You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Reality #Thinking #Appreciate

The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Pregnancy #Together #May

I'm convinced that had I not changed my name, I don't think I would have had quite the same career curve that I eventually had.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Thinking #Curves #Names

We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.
-- Ben Kingsley

#Change #Actors #Rhythm