Hey folks, Harry here with a wonderful interview with an actor that always causes me to smile when I see his name in the credits of a film. Most recently, in RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, his character didn't have alot of screentime... but oh dear God what time he had, he made complete use of. Kingsley is one of those performers that when I watch on screen, I can tell... right there in his eyes... he believes from moment to moment what the character is seeing, feeling and experiencing. AT THE SAME TIME... His dialogue delivery and gestures are exquisite... I adore his screen work, and envy Anton's time spent speaking with him. Kingsley is one of the true jewels working on the silver screen today... He reminds me of the great work of Claude Rains and James Mason. And I can't wait to see his work in SEXY BEAST which showed at Toronto...
Ben Kingsley Interview
I spoke with Ben during the Toronto International Yadda Yadda in connection with his latest film, Sexy Beast.
FYI- Mild spoiler warning at the end.
AS: How did you happen to come to this role?
BK: A nice chain of coincidences. I have an agency in London, ICM, which is also of course in New York and L.A., and ICM also represents the director. So they first got sight of this remarkable script, beautifully written by Mellis and Scinto. They zoomed it over to me and said, “You’ve got to read this. There’s no offer. We’ve no idea how it’s going, what the director will think of the idea of you…” And then I heard that he really wanted to meet up with me, so I met up with Jonathan (Glazer, the director of Sexy Beast) and just after maybe five minutes with Jonathan we definitely decided we had to do it together.
AS: From my perspective, and I’ve seen a fair number of your films but certainly not everything, it seemed a very different role for you. Normally your characters are very eloquent, and while Don certainly has a lot of verbiage, it’s the same twelve words over and over again.
BK: Over and over again. He’s completely obsessive and compulsive, and he’s… what did Jonathan say? The director gave me a great phrase to use. He said it’s a ‘buried intelligence.’ And as you say, most of the time when I’m hired to do a movie it’s because they want to film the intelligence, literally on my skin, on my face, in my eyes. And God, it was a very, very wonderful exercise in hitting a much reduced target. He’s a much smaller and precise target to hit than a grand baroque intelligence like the guy in Schindler’s List…
AS: Or even a Bruce Pandolfini.
BK: Oh, Pandolfini, which I shot here, yes.
AS: Searching for Bobby Fischer is one of my favorite films of all time.
BK: Oh, thank you, I’m delighted, it’s definitely one of my favorite films too.
AS: It’s great at this year’s festival- you’re here, Joan Allen’s here at the fest this year, Laura Linney’s here…
BK: Gosh. That scene with Laura Linney and Joe (Mantegna), every time I see it, it cracks me up. I get a huge lump in my throat because THAT’S the way a dad should talk about his son. Just that. And then when Joan says, “Get out of my house…” oh!
AS: Man. I wish we had an hour, we could talk about it-
BK: OK. OK. I’m so sorry.
AS: Oh no! I brought it up. Anyway…
BK: Buried intelligence. A very, very savagely limited vocabulary. And he’s sort of turned himself into a weapon. He’s like an axe, or a machete, or sort of a blunt instrument. With the tattoos on his arms- he’s even decorated his body.
AS: That one scene in the kitchen with Ray Winstone, where you’re just lunging at him as you speak, was fantastic.
BK: Yeah, yeah.
AS: But that’s so different from what we expect from ‘Ben Kingsley’.
BK: I tapped into myself because I don’t know that world. Ray does. Ray’s pretty intimate… his knowledge of that world is pretty intimate. He knows those London boys, he lives in Essex, he knows that south London scene. I live seventy miles upstate from London in Oxfordshire. Farming country, very affluent, middle class, country homes blah blah blah. And I don’t know these guys. I occasionally will come up against these guys if I’m on a movie and the driver is from south London. And I’m in the Mercedes, in the back seat, and I listen. And you hear some wonderful things. They don’t realize what they’re saying, you know. It’s massively sexist, racist, homophobic, it’s the lot, you know? It’s the lot. And of course they can do that in the pub. They think they can sit in their own car, which is like their pub on wheels, and they think they can do that to.
AS: Everybody has that mindset that the car is them- “Oh, he hit me”, not “Oh, he hit my car.”
BK: (doing the accent) “Oh, I’ve got a great joke for ya, Mr. Kingsley”, and you think, “Oh, no, don’t tell it, don’t tell it, please don’t tell it.” “There’s this Pakistani…” “Oh no, don’t do it.” “There’s this gay Pakistani…” “No no no, don’t go there, please.”
AS: So did you do a lot of research for this one?
BK: No, nothing, nothing at all. I was in L.A., and then I was in Morocco, doing another shoot. So Don had to come from inside me. I’ve always been fascinated by that particular lump of our society, that Don represents. And the terrible violence on our football terraces and in our streets… England is a pretty violent place. Tony Blair has a lot… you know, his hands are full with looking after things. And policing, it’s not a bad word. Policing the society. Particularly the white male, and the young white male, in the United Kingdom feels desperately disenfranchised, for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons. These same guys, who used to go out and police the empire, are now stuck.
AS: With nowhere to go.
BK: Nowhere except the football terraces. Whereas Don Logan for example, fifty years ago, he’d have been out there bashing the darkies. He would! He’d have been a policeman in the colonial police force, or something like that. Or if not… let’s think big for Don. SAS? Paratroopers? Green Berets? Something violent. But he doesn’t have the discipline. He takes things too personally, as a personal affront to his honor that Ray’s character will not join his platoon, his team.
AS: Had you worked with Ray before?
BK: No. Ray was so generous to me, because Ray is a south London guy. When I arrived on the set I thought, “Oh God, I’m going to have to do my voice with Ray. I’m going to have to do Don’s voice.” On the first day Ray said, “You’ve got it. Not only have you got it- I know what street he lives on.”
AS: (laughing)
BK: “He’s just like my mate. He’s got it, Johnny! You’ve got it, Benny!” And so I thought, “Ray, that is so generous.” Because anyone coming from a particular world, and an actor waltzes in and tries to do that thing could get huge resistance. Understandably. But Ray just wants to get on with it, he’s great.
AS: You talked about how you came to the role, but what specifically attracted you to it?
BK: The reduction. Characters that I normally play, I play the complexity within that dilemma. Pandolfini, Stern, Gandhi, wonderful complexity within their dilemmas. But with Don, it’s one voice, it’s one weapon, it’s one fixed point of view from within one fixed strata of society. Egg, chips and bacon and sausage for breakfast. Cholesterol, please. The hot mug o’ tea with five sugars in it. But that’s their way of life, and it’s such a wonderful reduced, boiled down, essential target to hit.
AS: So did you find that there was more freedom then?
BK: Yes, much more freedom. Freedom because the confines are so tight and you know when you’re wrong. You know when you stray outside of Don’s world, you know that Don would not be able to put that syntax together in his head. Don would not be able to complete that thought. Don would not be able to make that connection.
AS: Was there any improv in creating that dialogue, or was it all script?
BK: Word perfect.
AS: Really? Wow.
BK: Word for word. Syllable for syllable. Note for note, that music, perfect. Because the music on the page was too good to ignore. That musical score of those words was too good to ignore. So brilliantly laid down. There it is on the page. And that’s what made me jump when I read it. I didn’t know how I was going to learn it, but I had to do this guy. It’s practically a thirty-three page monologue.
AS: (laughing) Just with… well, yeah, actually, come to think of it, it is kind of Beckett-like.
BK: It’s very Beckett-like. And I did Waiting for Godot in ’97 on stage, one of my few times that I’ve dared to go on stage again. And my goodness, I’m glad I did. Because definitely Don is Beckett. And he’s waiting for an answer. He’s waiting for an answer, for all those hours he’s waiting in that beautiful villa. And if he doesn’t get it he’s going to punch an answer out of him. He just kept barking. You know how dogs bark, until you do something? They’ll bark for days, until you open the door or feed them or take them for a walk- or shoot them! You know. And that’s what happened- they had to put him down.
