It is obvious that Ben Kingsley is astonishingly devoted to his work.
Although many cringe when acting is referred to as a craft — or actors speak of honing it — this term seems comfortably appropriate when they are used by Sir Ben, as he likes to be called.
“The information that life has given us is all we have in acting,” the Oscar-winning star of “Gandhi” said recently in a downtown hotel room. “You can’t act on information that you don’t have.”
Kingsley must have an awful lot of information.
Throughout his career, he has been noted as a formless shape-shifter, almost magical in his ability to disappear into one film and re-appear in the next as something altogether different. The half-Indian, half-English Kingsley has portrayed the title characters in “Moses,” “Lenin” and “Gandhi,” gangster Meyer Lansky in “Bugsy,” a United States vice president in “Dave” and the devilish, brutal Don Logan in “Sexy Beast.”
And despite his apparent lack of a persistent presence, Kingsley brings to every film an ample supply of dignified substance. Yet he maintains that acting is the farthest thing from his mind.
“When you hear a gunshot, even though you know it’s a blank, your body goes into shock,” Kingsley related with wide, emphatic eyes. “It’s impossible to try to act it. It just happens, and it’s real.”
Kingsley currently appears in “House of Sand and Fog,” where he forged a strong relationship with his onscreen son, actor Jonathan Ahdout. In his latest movie Kingsley plays an immigrant trying to rebuild the life he and his family left behind in Iran.
“It was a bit of a struggle casting the son,” Kingsley said. “But when [Ahdout] appeared, he brought to the room a great dignity.”
Kingsley spoke with great affection for the first-time actor and even went so far as to say that Ahdout exhibits many qualities that he cherishes in his own sons.
The mingling of real emotion and fictional circumstances serves as further evidence for conceiving of Kingsley as an actor with a unique, developed approach.
Furthermore, one does not know exactly where the actor Kingsley ends and his character du jour begins. Kingsley himself seems to struggle with this blurred line.
“It’s especially difficult because you have to do some scenes many times,” Kingsley said. “If you are too emotionally invested then you are unable to do say, nine takes.”
Ultimately, Kingsley has a passion for epic grandeur in both his acting methods and his characters.
“I think that I have an appetite for mythology,” Kingsley mused. “If you can take the plot of a film, say ‘House of Sand and Fog’, and it still holds translated into mythology, than that is exciting for me.”