Top 30 Ben Kingsley Quotes

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

There’s so much crap talked about acting.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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