Ben Kingsley Quotes
-
With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
→ -
I think I'm more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
→ -
Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
→ -
I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.
→ -
You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.
→ -
I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.
→ -
I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.
→ -
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.
→ -
We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.
→ -
Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.
→ -
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.
→ -
But comedy I'd love to do as much as humanly possible.
→ -
I didn't go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey.
→ -
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
If you are a libertine, if you're not given to long-term faithful relationships, you tend to project your behavior onto everyone else. It's like the person who knows they're not trustworthy; they tend to mistrust everyone else.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
→ -
In cinema, the leading player is the director.
→ -
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.
→
Related Authors
-
Joel Edgerton Actor -
Rebel Wilson Actress -
Sigourney Weaver Actress -
Abigail Breslin Actress -
Ralph Fiennes Actor -
Idris Elba Actor -
Dick Van Dyke Actor -
Bill Murray Actor -
Elle Fanning Actress -
Simon Pegg Actor -
Sacha Baron Cohen Actor -
John Turturro Actor -
Richard Attenborough Actor -
Mark Ruffalo Actor -
Christopher Walken Actor -
Don Cheadle Actor -
Giancarlo Esposito Actor -
Asa Butterfield Actor -
Guy Pearce Actor -
Ray Winstone Film actor