Written by Aaron Lehmann
Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley visited the Museum of The Moving Image in Astoria Queens on Wednesday to speak about the upcoming Martin Scorcese film Hugo, in which he plays the part of Georges Méliès. He also spent a great deal of time reviewing his past works and shared valuable lessons learned over the course of his epic career.
The evening was hosted and moderated by Chief Curator David Schwartz, who opened up with a question about what it is that enables a person to become an actor.
Sir Kingsley considered this to be not one single element, but something different for each individual performer. He said that for he himself, acting was learned very early on as a means to hold the attention of his family. They often referred to him as “Danny Kaye“. This role he created for himself within the family dynamic served a specific function, due to what he described as “uneasy beginnings of being unseen and unheard”. He was raised in, what he described to be, a depressing and unloving environment, and so he became the family fixer. It is through his performances as a small child that he would attempt to convert neurosis into something creative, as well as it being a means to captivate the attention of his emotionally cold and unresponsive parents.
What sealed the deal for Sir Kingsley on the dream of becoming an actor, was when he went to go and see the film The Small Miracle in the cinema as a young boy with his parents. The story of The Small Miracle is that of a young orphaned boy who is traveling with his donkey. This donkey provides the boy with his only means for survival. Unfortunately, it has become ill and is dying. The orphan in the film, Peppino, was played by Vittorio Manunta, who just so happened to be of the same age and of similar appearance to Sir Kingsley at the time. When he was leaving the theater at the end of the screening with his family, the owner of the establishment grabbed him and picked him up over his head and yelled out to the exiting audience members, “It’s little Peppino! It’s little Peppino!”. This is the moment he fell in love with the idea of becoming an actor.
Museum of The Moving Image
Sir Kingsley was then asked about the balance of both vulnerability and confidence that an actor must possess.
“Vulnerability in the actor is the most valuable currency”, he responded. He explained how he considers this to be particularly difficult for male actors, as well as an often overlooked beautiful and important aspect of the male psyche. It is in the film Elegy, which he felt that he was given the opportunity to explore this part of himself. “Possibly one of the greatest human struggles is the struggle for intimacy”, he explained. For a few years before filming he went through very “dark times”. He had recently overcome various destructive relationships, broke negative patterns and found love before taking on this project. “In my happiness”, he said, “paradoxically I could explore pain”. The film’s director, Isabel Coixet, was able to see vulnerabilities and content within a scene that a male director may not have picked up on. “She is a hunter like myself”. A “hunter” according to Sir Kingsley, is one who seeks truth. “Acting is a kind of hunting. Looking for the essence of the character. The perfect gesture, silhouette…”. But he also warned that acting can be a kind of armor – something to hide behind. Some of his colleagues “don’t exist like you or me. They move from one character to another”.
Sir Kingsley’s process is directly linked to his early work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which he joined in 1967, where he honed his craft before creating any of his film work. When he describes his means of creating a role or understanding a character, he often compares them to the characters of Shakespeare, archetypes and mythology. He believes that there are some characters that are so psychologically sound that you can take them apart and put them back together again, approach them from any number of angles and no matter what, throughout generation and generation, they are and forever will be, air tight. He found this to be so in the character of Gandhi, written by John Briley.
Sir Kingsley discussed the scene from the film Gandhi which you can view by following the link below.
He explained how this scene is Shakespearean in that Shakespeare would often reduce an epic battle down to a conversation between two soldiers on opposing sides. These soldiers would always be named SOLDIER 1 and SOLDIER 2. Through masterful dialogue everything could be explained in this simple manner. During the line, “I’m an Indian traveling in my own country. I see no reason for trouble.”, he explained why he chose to do this line in one breath. He could have easily made the choice to say the line as such, “I’m an Indian (Breath) traveling in my own country. (Breath) I see no reason for trouble.” He chose the former. “Doing a full bulk of text in one breath locks in the audience and holds them”. He also explained that we as human beings do not think in sentences anymore. “We think in sentence fragments. Gandhi, being perhaps the most intelligent person that ever lived, thought in paragraphs”.
Sir Kingsley did most of his work on developing the character Gandhi without ever visiting India. He considered it to be the story of Romeo and Juliet. He, playing the part of Romeo, and India playing the part of Gandhi’s Juliet. When he first came to India he thought as Romeo did when he first laid eyes upon Juliet, “There she is”.
In Schindler’s List, Ben Kingsley plays the part of Itzhak Stern. He met Itzhak Stern before filming and explained that it is said that “If a survivor of a Holocaust explains vividly and articulately to another person his experiences during the holocaust, then the listener becomes a witness”. Sir Kingsley often finds a word for the character he is going to play in a story as a means of anchoring himself in his part of the whole. For playing the part of Itzhak Stern, he chose the word “witness”. He needed to hear from his director, Steven Spielberg, that they were on the same page. He needed a word from Mr. Spielberg that was either the same word or a close relative. When he asked his director, “What, in one word, is the role or function of my character in the story?”, Mr. Spielberg replied, “Conscience. He is the conscience of the story”. To which Sir Kingsley extended his hand to him and said, “Okay”. He believes the genius of Schindler’s List is that the writer is able to convey the incomprehensible to the audience. “Utter savage chaos. Once we can comprehend the holocaust, we are lost”, he said.
Sir Kingsley has also played characters on the dark side of the spectrum. From the gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugsy, to the outright sadist Don Logan in Sexy Beast. “One shouldn’t play a bad guy as a bad guy. He has his own code of ethics, morality, needs…”.
The key to unlocking Meyer Lansky was the discovery that he was a Patriarch. Don Logan was a pure archetype – he was “the bringer of chaos”.
“We are all a balance of dark and light. There is Gandhi and Don Logan in us all and it is a matter of how history corners us and how we get ourselves out of that corner”.
Sir Kingsley said that early in the day he was speaking to his friend Whoopi Goldberg and they were discussing how nature strives for balance. “It’s true.”, he said, “The boy who couldn’t be seen or heard is now all over being seen and heard.”
