{"id":11116,"date":"2023-12-31T17:41:25","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T17:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11116"},"modified":"2024-01-18T16:42:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T16:42:22","slug":"how-ben-kingsley-dealt-with-instant-fame-after-gandhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11116","title":{"rendered":"How Ben Kingsley dealt with instant fame after \u2018Gandhi\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Ben Kingsley, who turns 80 today, had spent fifteen years on the English stage with occasional small screen roles when Richard Attenborough changed his life by casting him in the title role of his epic feature film \u2018Gandhi\u2019 in 1982.<\/p>\n

Two years later, over a pleasant lunch in Hill\u2019s Restaurant in Stratford-upon-Avon, he told me how he had adjusted to instant fame after being named best actor at the Academy Awards and the British Academy Film Awards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When he returned from India after making that film, he went into a stage production of Alexander Dumas\u2019s one-man 1836 play \u2018Kean\u2019 (below) based on the life of British theatrical star Edmund Kean. \u2018He was a pop star of his time but he could not cope with the adoration his ambition craved and he died at 45,\u2019 Kingsley noted. \u2018I went from playing a man who was adored for his purity, simplicity and integrity to one who was adored for his arrogance, his totally hedonistic approach to life; a man who insisted that his craft serve his ego rather than his ego serving his craft. There was, however, a very similar context of a man who had to cope with fame. I learned a lot.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The actor won the BAFTA award just before the play opened in the provinces and he was greeted with a standing ovation before he opened his mouth. \u2018I had to spent the rest of the evening learning to cope with that,\u2019 he said. The production moved to the Lyric Theatre in London and two days before he walked onstage there, he was in Los Angeles where he won the Oscar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It was a many-layered challenge,\u2019 Kingsley said. \u2018It was a wonderful irony that while all the hyperbole was pouring in \u2013 which, of course, is wonderful after you\u2019ve worked in the theatre for 15 years; it\u2019s fabulous and I\u2019m not remotely cynical about it or other awards \u2013 there was a man in a crisis of priorities, Kean, who I was reponsible for every night onstage. Then I\u2019d go home and see this thing on my shelf, this Oscar. It tempered everything and automatically put it into the right perspective.\u2019<\/p>\n

Because of the intensity of his performances, Kingsley said he was often asked if he was a \u201ctechnical\u201d actor. \u201cWell, of course, I\u2019m a technical actor,\u2019 he said. \u2018We all are. We stab somebody to death technically as an extreme example but once you get into the realm of \u201cdon\u2019t you really feel it while you\u2019re doing it?\u201d Heaven forbid. No!. We aren\u2019t paid to feel it, we\u2019re paid to tell a story. We\u2019re paid to show people how it feels, not feel it ourselves. We\u2019re paid to encourage the audience to feel it but not feel it, that\u2019s it. Working too much from the inside can be dangerous. I don\u2019t want to feel it. I want to give it away.\u2019<\/p>\n

Kingsley said he lived about nine miles away from Stratford in a house partly 15th century and partly Georgian opposite the church in a small farming village. \u2018I love Warwickshire,\u2019 he said. \u2018I love the unequivical way the seasons change and, of course, because of Shakespeare who I know went to my village and was very drunk there because he wrote about it.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Ben Kingsley, who turns 80 today, had spent fifteen years on the English stage with occasional small screen roles when Richard Attenborough changed his life by casting him in the title role of his epic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,2257],"tags":[376,1328,5434],"class_list":["post-11116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","tag-ben-kingsley","tag-richard-attenborough","tag-gandhi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11116"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11130,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11116\/revisions\/11130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}