Ben Kingsley Quotes

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

You have to be very specific on the technical part of the acting.

I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

I guess I'm probably a Method actor; I don't know... I just think of it as staying in the zone.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

You can't generalise, of course, but there is a school of American acting where there is a kind of pride in the number of takes you can do.

For me, acting is a series of impressions rather than trying to find one line through to the end, which risks becoming more of a presentation.

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.

My acting career began on the streets of New York. When I was a cop, I played many impressive roles, from derelict to a doctor, and my life often depended on my performance.

As actors, you play people who are not yourselves!

Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

I grew up the son of an acting teacher, so I was kind of introduced to all of these various methods early... I've never been really good at articulating how, what that process is in the way that Stanislavsky could.

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

I'm a method actor.

I'm not really into method acting - the way I was taught was the good old-fashioned British way of just doing your research and getting on with it.

I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is.

I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

I'm always practicing lines, researching, trying to be fresh, and fully trying to become the characters I play. That's how I roll.

There seem to be two sorts of actors. Some people play themselves marvellously, and others, like me, rather like to become someone else.

Trying to be a good actor has to be involved with placing yourself imaginatively in different people's circumstances.

It was very difficult acting. I feel it is a very tough job to portray someone else's character and to behave like that on screen.