Ben Kingsley Quotes

Hamlet is a little daunting.

Hamlet is a remarkably easy role. Physically it's hard because it tends to be about three hours long and you're talking the whole time. But it's a simple role and it adapts itself very well, because the thing about Hamlet is, we all are Hamlet.

Hamlet is the result of Shakespeare's work on Brutus.

'Hamlet' is the most famous play in the world for a reason. The journey you go on is incredible.

Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense.

Every time has its own 'Hamlet.'

'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.

Hamlet' is a real ensemble piece: you have to realise that he's just one part of the story.

I'd love to play Hamlet.

I never want to see 'Hamlet' ever again! Never ever!

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

You have to learn the language of Hamlet.

From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.

The trap in Hamlet is he's the most passive of Shakespeare's characters. He's not a Richard III, not out there taking a lot of action. It's a lot of asides and soliloquies where he's wrapped in angst, and that's not a very interesting character.

One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.

I'm not too unintelligent.

I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.

If you were to ask everyone what 'Hamlet' was about, they might say, "It's about a prince, and he says, 'To be or not to be.'"

I have a good mind but I don't like to bore anyone with it.

'Hamlet' is obviously a role a lot of actors want to portray or be involved with in some way and that I'd like to be involved in.

Visually speaking, nothing calls Shakespeare to mind like Hamlet holding Yorick's skull.

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

I've always wanted to give 'Hamlet' a shot. It's the big one, you know. I haven't done Shakespeare professionally, so I think it would be terrifying.

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.