Ben Kingsley's Quotes

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

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

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

I have never felt bereft of anything.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.