If one is going to offer children stories that underneath the story must be something that will inform, stimulate and guide, I love to be on board. I think anything that resonates with history, as does The Jungle Book and Watership Down, reflects patterns of behavior, power struggles, deprivation, migration, survival, joy, love, betrayal, and all of these things. It's tragic that children are encouraged to ignore history. We ignore history and any literature that is historically based in history. Even though both of those films involved animals, of course they reflect human behavior.
Ben KingsleyOne 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 KingsleyMy 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.
Ben Kingsley