Quotes By Ben Kingsley

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

In cinema, the leading player is the director.

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.

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.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

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

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

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

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!

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.

I don't honestly think people know what acting is.

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

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.

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.

With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.