Last year I interviewed Sir Ben Kingsley for the latest Corduroy magazine just as he’d finished work on The Invention of Hugo Cabret with Martin Scorsese. I saw Hugo on Boxing Day and enjoyed seeing Kingsley’s character in action. He plays Georges Méliès, a legendary filmmaker and visionary who created worlds from the fiber of the muscle of his being. Méliès was an inspiring man who created a lasting history, and having channeled him for months, Kingsley was an inspiring actor to make contact with. I am very privileged to have had such an opportunity, and I thank the staff of Corduroy for granting me that indomitable task. May I have many more chances to hold such inspiring conversations with trailblazers like Kingsley and Corduroy. See below for an exclusive transcript of our phone conversation (I’ve emboldened my favourite parts, parts I think you will enjoy too.) For the full interview, pick up a copy of Corduroy magazine. We told a great story together. Yours, Sophie

Sophie Ward speaks with Sir Ben Kingsley, March 18th, 2011.

B: Hello.

S: Hi Ben, how are you?

B: Oh fine! Hello, is that Sophie?

S: Yes it is.

B: Okay. Where are you calling from then.

S: I’m calling from New York.

B: Oh great.

S: Yeah. So it’s the middle of the morning. It’s very very warm, strangely.

B: Lovely.

S: So I know you have a number of projects on right now, so thanks for making the time to speak with me.

B: That’s fine.

S: What’s the favourite of your projects right now, either at work or not at work? What are you getting stuck into that you’re really enjoying?

B: Well, I don’t know whether it’s torture or enjoyment. [My wife Daniela Lavender and I] have our own film company called Lavender Pictures. We’re developing five films, so whatever I’m doing, even if I’m shooting I go back to my trailer – which is no longer a place where I can rest and relax. It’s turned into an office. It’s a work space, and we try to keep all these projects alive by meeting producers and directors and writers, pushing it along. It’s a slow process but it’s very exciting to bring the components of the project together ourselves. We’re bringing personalities that we know and trust, and have found thrilling to work with, together on the same projects, and it’s like cooking really, bringing the right ingredients together. It’s an ongoing exercise that I find really exciting.

S: It’s like alchemy.

B: It is absolutely, yes. And it’s a process that not many producers understand if you work by committee. Often alchemy is understood by one individual – it’s not something that’s collectively understood. So often I find that production companies now are run by committee with no real guiding imagination behind the decisions: Now it’s “I have to take it to the committee and talk it through with everyone else,” which sort of weakens it really. It starts to lose authenticity and courage.

S: It’s wonderful that you [and Daniela] can do that. Do you think it’s a function of having two actors having created the production company, such that you know the process that you want?

B: I think so. I think that between us, having been in the business for quite a lot of years, you learn a lot along the way – and one doesn’t tend to lose that as an actor. The knowledge you acquire is quite phenomenal: about scripts, crew, casting, directors, designers, composers, even the technical side. I’m fascinated by lenses, and choice of lenses, and camera angles: how they can make such a colossal difference to a scene. I think by osmosis we’ve learnt a lot and to apply that to projects we love is amazing, and highly personal, and very exciting.

S: That’s awesome. I read once that you “Don’t need to go off and research, it’s all inside of you waiting to come out.” You referred to yourself like a walking research library. I love that, and I can hear that in what you’re saying, that you’ve just absorbed everything around you in the environment of the film industry. It’s great that it has an opportunity to come out.

B: And also Sophie, I sense that actors are hunters. Even if it’s not in our direct vision, our peripheral vision is always active, hunting for character, for stories, for detail, for nuance. I recently had the privilege of addressing the Oxford University Union Society, and I used an image with the students there; that my experience and my collective experience is like a tightly wound spring, slowly uncoiling. [There exists within me] all kinds of information, which maybe I ingested as a child, and can’t consciously recollect to you, but, it’s going to be in one of my performances. Rather like how a painter almost subconsciously dips the paintbrush into the palette, and if you ask the painter, “Why is that yellow going next to that blue?” The painter will say, “I don’t know. It just has to.”

S: Yes! I’m reading a book right now called The Holographic Universe, I’m sure you know of it.

B: Oh golly.

S: Oh golly! Yes, it’s quite crazy. But one of the concepts is that our memory isn’t located at any specific place in the brain and that it is like a hologram where there are different mirrors: the memory lives inside of you and can come out in many different facets, almost like parallel universes.

B: Absolutely. And I’m sure, Sophie, that some people who, perhaps unfortunately, are diagnosed with some terrible cramp in a muscle or some weird cyst growing somewhere, [might be told] by the more enlightened physicians, that “That’s a stored memory,” and “as soon as you unlock that, the sooner your tissue will heal, because you’re holding something in your stomach, in your chest, in your arms.” These can be trauma, entering the body and lodging itself there. For life! I’m a huge believer for example, that sadness is something one has to live with, but, I’m a huge believer in the necessity of tragedy in drama. Because it allows us to grieve. So what I do find irritating are people (and I must be forgiving, I must be forgiving) who, for example say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t watch Schindler’s list, it’s too upsetting.’ I want to smack them!!! I can’t see it any other way, I want to say “For god’s sake, watch it! It’s part of your collective information! Deal! It’s not someone else’s story, it’s YOUR story.”

S: Yes, it’s our story. All of it is our story.

B: Yep, all of it is us.

S: Yeah. That’s amazing. I also remember you saying that your soul was fully articulate in the work you were doing at that moment. I loved that. Do you still feel that way?

B: Well I may not put it in exactly the same way, because honestly I don’t ever recollect interviews, they’re just like great conversations. I’m not a historian, I’m not listening to what I’m saying.

S: Oh exactly. I knew you wouldn’t remember.

B: I just express. And what I find is that (I love cinema, as you know) between action and cut is the most private and the most profoundly connected I am in my entire life. The camera is seeing something extraordinarily private. I’m making something out of nothing. Alchemy. And yet, between action and cut it can be caught on camera forever. It’s that process that I find fascinating. And I think by necessity, I am and have to be completely vulnerable – technically in control of what I’m doing – but my soul has to become fluid, and flow into the mould that eventually might be a beautiful bronze statue. But it has to be liquid, it has to flow. It’s an act of letting go, between action and cut, and along very disciplined technical lines. I don’t start improvising or stand in the wrong place, or turning with my back to the camera. It’s all very disciplined. But the essential thing is that marvelous melting and flowing, essentially of the soul, yes.

S: Yes, that’s really interesting when you say that there’s the discipline and then the letting go as well. It’s interesting that one can have that. I’m not saying it’s a very difficult place to reach, but I think it must take some training to really stay with the script or with what you’re being asked to do, but let go at the same time. That’s amazing freedom.

B: I think it does take application and repetition – and trying, and trying, and trying – and then you build up a relationship between your soul and your technique such that they fit together easily: Your technique expresses whatever alchemy you can offer. It’s the technique that communicates that; it’s the mechanical communication of something very extraordinary. It just has to be communicated through words and gestures which everybody can comprehend.

S: I heard that you’re playing [groundbreaking French filmmaker and ‘First cinemagician’] George Méliès.

B: I finished George, about 6 weeks ago. That was with Martin Scorsese directing [The Invention of Hugo Cabret]. As you know, Martin is passionate about film and it’s history and evolution. I was basically inhabiting one of Martin’s greatest heroes. And it was quite wonderful to be in the same work space as Martin – both of us feeling such enthusiasm and affection for what we were doing. Wonderful man Marty. I miss him. Wonderful man.

S: One thing I’ve found very interesting is when you said that at some point people are going to lose track, and any preconceptions of you will be meaningless because you’ll be moving too fast. You’ll be in the white car, on the yellow horse, with the black jaguar, the clown on the tightrope. And then I read in a different interview, recently, where you are now gearing up to play George, and you were saying “It’s great, I’ll be playing a magician, an acrobat, a dancer, a producer, choreographer, director, writer, he was everything,” and I thought Wow! You really.. [Kingsley laughs] That’s the power of your word! The power of your word and your voice, or your communication, really creating your world. I fully believe in the power of our words creating our world, and how powerful words are, so I loved reading that.

B: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And Sophie, we mustn’t let our language collapse. Either the language is literary, or movement and dance, operatic songs, but we mustn’t let our vocabulary shrink into sound bites. We as humans have evolved a staggering vocabulary over the years, especially in our language, and to have that whittled down and discarded, thrown away and squandered, is very dangerous, I think. We must always use and love language, because if we lose our language we will be manipulable and defenceless when the crunch comes. We’ve got to be able to articulate and voice our passions – and not to always let other people do it for us.

S: Yes. I wholeheartedly second that. There’s been so much development, not only in language, and I’ve been thinking about this, whether it’s a natural growth, or whether it’s a manipulated or distorted growth, and I mean, I’m not really sure about that.

B: I’m not sure, I’m not sure… I had the pleasure of sitting next to a geneticist, a really high powered professor, and I asked her, “Where is evolution taking place? If I gave you two examples, where would you say it was generally taking place: Is it taking place inside the child in Soweto, who is collecting Coca Cola cans and hammering them flat and putting them in a bag and sending them out to pay for his or her education, surviving in Soweto under extraordinary odds? Or, is it evolving with the Apple and the young child who is gazing at a computer game, fiddling with buttons. Where is evolution taking place?” She said “God, I don’t know. I hope both. But I honestly don’t know.” It’s exactly what you’re saying. Is this false evolution? Is technology a completely false evolution? The machines are evolving, but are we shrinking? The child in Soweto is not shrinking, because there are no distractions. It’s all about human survival, human dignity, and progressing through something as a valiant soul, not with your head buried in a computer game. And yet I must be careful, because I participate in computer games as a performer. I voice them. And I think as a living art form they’re extraordinary. But not at the expense of everything else. That’s all I’m saying. There’s gotta be a balance.

S: I think that message is becoming more and more important these days, as time progresses. Do you think the film industry has grown in a good way, or do you think that there are certain things about the industry which are perhaps based in, or motivated by, things they weren’t motivated by before?

B: Well, you will get groundbreaking geniuses in the film industry. It attracts great talent from across the artistic board. It’s a matter of fact that within the beautifully expressive form, one’s idea’s become something out of nothing. [In the film industry] one’s ideas can be seen on the screen, within a reasonably measurable amount of time. You can see it. The groundbreaking geniuses were always dragging their weight: the exploiters, the hangers on, the shortcuts, but I think it is an art form that’s evolving. When you see The Invention of Hugo Cabret for example, in which I play George [Méliès], Martin Scorsese’s use of 3D and HD will be staggering. Because what [the audience] is expected to experience is how you first saw things as a child. Your body will tingle. All the molecules, and all the little memory banks in your body will go off like lovely warm alarm bells, because you will see something you hadn’t seen since you were two. That is, how you first saw something. And [Scorsese] managed to get there, miraculously, on the screen, in the way that Monet did, or Renoir, the way the amazing Impressionist painters did it years ago. And now Marty’s doing it. It’s impressionist, it’s how you first saw something. I think that’s extraordinary. I’m also thinking of Marty, because while I loved his work in Shutter Island, but I did think that Inception was a work of art. I really did. Extraordinary use of cinema, highly intelligent use of cinema: keeping the audience on their toes, being outrun by the film, running to catch up, coming out stimulated, WOW, going back and seeing it again. Wonderful! There are wonderful, trusting strands of the cinema that are always evolving, and it’s very exciting.

S: And lots of new niches and genres and cross genres. It’s wonderful.

B: Yes, it is!

S: Do you have any advice for younger actors?

B: I do! I do! Always! I’m always conscious when I’m talking to you, and your colleagues, of the young actor reading what I’m saying. It’s very, very important to me: To talk about hunting, to talk about constantly collecting through one’s peripheral vision, to talk about technique as well as the soul; because a young actor doesn’t want to hear about my soul, but he can benefit from the use of the word technique, in a good way. I’m aware of that – [the fact] that I’m in a position to be interviewed, which is a wonderful position to be in, but, there’s a reader, and that’s very important. [It’s very important] that we give interviews to young actors and say it’s a tremendously rewarding job, it’s crushingly difficult, the disappointments are horrendous and yet the sublime moments are beyond description. You must, must, must, have technique to back up everything you do, and you must appreciate that your job is extraordinarily simple. You’re a storyteller: no matter what anyone else tries to tell you, or what magazines you might be seduced onto the cover of, or celebrity exercises you might be kidnapped into. Your job, in your tribe, is to be a storyteller. Because a lot of young actors are getting very confused about what they’re supposed to be, and the distance between what we safely and humbly are, and what they think the world expects them to be, can mean they end up stuck in a hotel room. Which shocks me. Because very often there’s expectation of some compensation, which there doesn’t need to be. [Actors] have this beautiful life, but you must take the rough with the smooth. It’s part of being an actor, it’s part of maturing into an adult performer. Into an artist eventually, hopefully.

S: What have you learnt from the industry, personally?

B: It’s very very hard to answer that, because it’s very plastic and very much in a state of flux. I don’t know yet. I think I’ve learnt to trust my intuition. I think the industry has been kind enough and supportive enough to me to give me the space in which to trust my intuition. If you’re not given a place to stand, you’ll never be able to trust your intuition. I have been. And I am trusting my intuition more. And that, for better or for worse, is where I am now. But, the business teaches me to trust my intuition. The business teaches me to get back to who I originally am.

S: Mm! That’s a wonderful job to have.

B: It’s self healing and self-stimulating. You don’t need drugs. It’s that healing and self regenerating, that you don’t need any other substances other than “IT”. You must struggle to get IT – you don’t need to struggle to get your next fix or to be a diva – you must struggle to get your next job. Might be a bit harder, but it’s worth it. It’s beautiful.

S: I remember reading a story of Ram Dass going up a mountain in India and meeting an old guru. Ram Dass was at the time doing his experiments with LSD, and this guru asked Ram Dass if he could have some of what he was taking, because he’d seen into his mind and said, “You were thinking about your mother on the mountain last night, weren’t you,” and Ram Dass was blown away that he could see that in his mind, because he hadn’t told anyone. So the guru said, “Give me what you’ve been experimenting with.” He took I think triple the dose, and Ram Dass was very very nervous and worried. But he just sat there and sat there and sat there and nothing happened. (Kingsley bursts out laughing) And this man said to Ram Dass, “I don’t need what you’re having because I’m already there. I’m already there.”

B: Yep, I’m already there! Wonderful! That’s so great.

S: To get there is the point.

B: A very short point.

S: Yes! I’m so happy to hear you say that. It’s so important. I come from a family where my sister is an actress and my brothers are very passionate young directors and editors, and I’m a writer. So, it’s great and really very wonderful to speak with you. I feel very strongly about what you’re saying and I totally support it.

B: Great. Well, coming from your family, we speak the same language.

S: Thank you so much. I’ll let you go.

B: I may be on a project in New York soon, so I’ll have my publicist contact you so you can find me, and we’ll follow through.

S: I would love that. Definitely. Have a lovely evening.

B: Yes. Lovely. Lovely to talk to you.

B: Lovely to talk to you too.

S: Bye.

B: Bye bye.