Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ben Kingsley
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: December 31
Actor
Character Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Snainton
North Yorkshire
Krishna Pandit Bhanji
Neither
Role
Choose
Roles
Either
Better
Play
Recognise
Men
Curious

More quotes by Ben Kingsley

Image
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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
Image
The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.
Ben Kingsley
Image
Sometimes it's right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I hope I'm able to achieve more on camera through stillness, through focus, through being quite careful to do less on every take, rather than more. So I'm reducing, rather than adding. Which hopefully is a good exercise. That's what I'd like to do.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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
Image
With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.
Ben Kingsley
Image
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