Ben Kingsley Quotes

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.

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

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'm open to any project, but my joyful projects are those through which I can say something and through which I can speak to the an audience of people in the world, and I can be that vehicle through which something can be said, I find that entirely thrilling and joyful.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.

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

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

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

My line-learning is very special. I like to learn the dialogue of the whole film before I arrive.

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.

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.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Equal partners aren't always what we envision as being manifestly equal. Equality can come in many different shapes and sizes and combinations.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

My wife and I have now founded Lavender Pictures. If one has one's own company, there are very few surprises, but there's still the actual thrill of trying to get these projects off the ground. We're meeting with some measure of success. Always, now and at any stage of my career, I'm open to ambush, but there have been the most extraordinary set of coincidences, which continues through my journey, and I find it thrilling. Often, out of left field and quite randomly, comes a project and I think, "My god, there you are!" It's quite beautiful, really.

I have never felt bereft of anything.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 those terrible times. [...] I'll get to wear a uniform.

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.

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.

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 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.

There's so much crap talked about acting.