Ben Kingsley Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

I do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can't because they can't face it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I have never felt bereft of anything.

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

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.

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.

There's so much crap talked about acting.

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.

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

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

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

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

I've met quite a number of people in my career, but I do have an extraordinary memory. And even though they may drift into the periphery of my memory, I can bring them right back when I need them.

The environment forces you to be utterly dependent between "action" and "cut" because the environment is perfect on your fellow actor. So as an acting exercise, it's absolutely thrilling that the focus that we had to bring to each other echoed in life, echoed in art. And when you get that parallel, it's really thrilling and it's full of surprises, but it all has a logic.

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.

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.

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.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

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.

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!

Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.

The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.

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.

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

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

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.

There is always something about the villains that I'm able to play, quote unquote, that isn't villainous.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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