Ben Kingsley Quotes

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 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.

You need particular note or rhythm in the symphony to be that minor key, or that sharp key or major chord. In musical terms, I try to hit the right note. But not alter the score of the music, just emphasize the note correctly.

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

Family is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don't have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody.

You want to know what I want? I'll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.

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

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

Shakespeare villains were extraordinary. Macbeth, Iago, Richard III... They're so richly layered that a British actor would find it almost impossible to create a two-dimensional villain, if he's explored in his early years or continues to explore his Shakespearean heritage. You can almost not judge them, if they're played really well.

I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.

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

I think that most actors attempt to keep in touch with the child.

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 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.

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 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. I feed off that and work off that. I don't like to be too prepared, no. However we define too prepared, if I feel it's getting that way, then I'll back off. My line-learning is very special. I like to learn the dialogue of the whole film before I arrive.

I don't do anything that would ever come across as advice or suggestion, but it's just part of a debate. Like, "I would like to try this," or "Let me do another one with more stillness, let me emphasize that." Rather than "I think you should emphasize this, I think" - you know, I don't impose choices.

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

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors.

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.

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.

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

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 don't honestly think people know what acting is.

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.

If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.

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