Quotes By Ben Kingsley

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

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.

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

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

John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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 so much to do on a film set. It is an extraordinarily invigorating and wonderful place to be, when things are running well.

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

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

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.

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.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

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.

All the great writers root their characters in true human 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'm convinced that had I not changed my name, I don't think I would have had quite the same career curve that I eventually had.

Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.

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

When Attenborough asked me to do Gandhi it was almost like stepping off one boat and stepping on to another, even though both boats are going at 60 miles per hour.

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.

Somewhere in your career, your work changes. It becomes less anal, less careful and more spontaneous, more to do with the information that your soul carries.

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.

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

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