Ben Kingsley Quotes (87 Quotes)

It would frighten me if I were to learn somewhere along the line that all of those emotions had been suppressed throughout my entire life, that would be very scary, because nature would express them, somehow, in some form.

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

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.

People have been, as I said earlier, crushed and distorted and forced into all kinds of strange postures as human beings because of circumstance. I don't know what monsters and demons would be in me if I felt that violence was the only way out of a very dark corner.

There's nothing worse than taking your children to a bad pantomime where they are having more fun on stage than the kids are in the audience. It's insulting, it's demeaning, it's excluding.

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

The number of choices you make in the event that you see on stage, those choices are sometimes largely determined by the rehearsal process and the experiments that you go through and the choices that you make in the rehearsal room, not in front of an audience.

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

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.

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

House of Sand and Fog.

I do have a massive curiosity.

A cello's soul is the resonance that makes it unique how it was made, when it was made, who's played it. Mine may be who my parents were, what I know about life, who I love and have loved. All that makes my bones resonate. If a director is fortunate enoug

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.

I wasn't particularly strong in the dramatic society, the drama group. I left Manchester Grammar School with abysmal A-level results. I then had a year's hiatus where I didn't know what to do at all.

Everything that's made me what I am today is part of that process of being intrigued and curious. But I really couldn't put my finger on any specific trigger from my childhood.

If people are generous with their information, then the actor can use that information lovingly and respectfully.

I found the absolute thrill of translating ancient poetic text into totally visceral, tangible and even relevant, immediate and urgent language... I was thrilled by Shakespeare. It surprised me, my profound delight in deciphering Shakespeare and making it completely flesh-and-blood.

I knew India not at all. I mean, I had never been before in my life.

I didn't go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

Great drama deals with the struggle for people's selves. You see it on the screen. Everyone is involved with the struggle with their own soul, struggling for that soul and to possess that soul.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

Well, it's wonderful to be identified strongly with my work.

I just think that on the bedrock of his creative genius, there resided in Shakespeare a male psyche and a female psyche and that they both dwelled very creatively and energetically inside him.

I may return to the stage, but not in the foreseeable future.

I'm holding a mirror to the audience and telling them there is a violent person in all of us.

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

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 have never felt bereft of anything.

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

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

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

I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.

I am not a classical actor I am an entertainer. I fell into classical acting by mistake and actually started out as a singer. I wrote the music for a musical play and it transferred to London and I sang the songs in London.

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 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.