Ben Kingsley Takes Another Sharp Turn

Published by The Editor at May 9, 2013

Sir Ben Kingsley has won an Academy Award, a Grammy, Two Golden Globes and a SAG award. He’s best known for his portrayal of Ghandi, but his extraordinary career couldn’t possibly be reduced to one role. Equally memorable are his performances in “Schindler’s List,” “House of Sand and Fog”, “Bugsy”, “Hugo” and a number of important tv miniseries. He stopped by the SiriusXM studios this week to talk with Ron Bennington about his role in the latest movie in the “Iron Man” series. Excerpts from the interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: It’s good to see you. “Iron Man 3” is out. Here’s what I loved about your character … no matter what you do in life now, you’re still also in show business. So if you’re a world leader, there’s a part of the time you’re in show business. If you’re a terrorist, you still have to do the show business thing as well.

Ben Kingsley: This is true. Because I think the modern audiences are beginning…they’re certainly aware of this. And they’re certainly aware of the amount of presentation that goes into a political presence or statement and the size of the team that he’s nursing and shaping that presentation. You have writers. You have makeup artists who will powder you down before your broadcast. You have the costume department. It’s very much…and it’s very presented. And I think that’s a clever twist on it.

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Ben Kingsley Talks About How Many People “Perform”

Ron Bennington: And we have expectations that people are funny. We have expectations that people are witty. So if they’re not, they really have to present that in a way that comes off for those few minutes.

Ben Kingsley: Absolutely, yeah. And also, what the Mandarin has to do, which is very carefully stage managed and scripted, is to broadcast to the nation in a way that gives him complete assuredness in his own sense of right, his own righteousness. He prefers to call himself a teacher, that’s from the script. Also, he sounds like a preacher, that’s from the script. And also, he’s the bringer of lessons, that’s from the script. And the tone is of a broadcaster saying – you may not like to hear this, but it’s for your own good. And it’s that, that underpins the threat really.

Ron Bennington: And I love that you use the word “like a broadcaster” because they have to play to a camera. Where if you went back and looked at Mussolini or Hitler, they played to the very big crowd. And it was theater, it was very large. But now it becomes small and has to be directed into the camera.

Ben Kingsley: It’s great that you mentioned those two from the ’30s because I love documentary footage and I’m fascinated by history. And we have to start learning our lessons from history because Mussolini was a clown, but the German guy, (laughs), he was totally stage managed by Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda. And he, on movie footage, has a total sense of messianic righteousness. And he has a total grasp of how to manipulate the audience – that it’s for their destiny. It’s for their history. It’s for their children. It’s for their own good. And what he’s saying is utterly abhorrent, but it’s delivered in a tone that he’s so almost paternalistic and measured. I am the man of the moment. And it’s a very frightening process and as you rightly point out, it’s been with us for a very long time.

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Ben Kingsley Talks About Why People Love “Iron Man”

Ron Bennington: But again, that’s takes us back to presentation. So the people putting this together, already know this is the effect we wanted to have and the audience has to play into that like it was an infomercial.

Ben Kingsley: Absolutely. Yeah. Which is built into my characterization in the script – to be…because Marvel never dumbed down. This franchise is very intelligent. It’s very stylized. It has a beautifully confident style. Has a great sense of humor, some times a self-deprecating sense of humor. It has vulnerability, tenderness, self-doubt, panic attacks, revenge – all these wonderful human values woven into the fabric of the film. So that you have the most extraordinary action sequence that personally I’ve ever seen on the screen. Followed by a moment of complete absurdity. It’s diffused and reassembled. Diffused and reassembled. Audiences are having such a treat by joining the ride as it were.

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Ben Kingsley Talks About Working With Shane Black

Ron Bennington: And of course, these things have a great expectation to do large business which overseas, it’s already a gigantic hit before it even comes to the states, but you don’t feel any of that pressure being part of it. You just feel like under that kind of Marvel blanket that people that already know how to open up these kind of big films.

Ben Kingsley: The atmosphere on the set was such that you don’t feel pressure – you just feel that you want to give your best because you like these guys so much. And that’s very different from feeling that you’re being tested. There are some directors who lacking in confidence themselves, always make the actor feel that he or she is auditioning. Every day. But Shane Black and his team, have a way of saying – okay, this is your role. Now we’re going to film it. We’re over here and we’re going to film it. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Ron Bennington: I find it amazing that anyone would make you feel – with all of your experience, all the great roles that you’ve done in your life, that somebody could make you feel like you’re still auditioning.

Ben Kingsley: Well, just like Robert Downey Jr.’s part in “Iron Man”, there is vulnerability. Whatever my iron suit is, I’m vulnerable inside it. Because in order to be a good player, you have to be vulnerable to the other actor. You have to be vulnerable to the emotions of the scene. Whatever they are. And therefore, that vulnerability, that opening up, does make you susceptible to being attacked by the director in a really wrong destructive way. Because those guys know I’ve opened myself up. So, I’m afraid I’m only as good as the company I keep and this team was amazing.

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Ben Kingsley Talks About What it Takes to Make a Film Work

Ron Bennington: So, making the decision on each film… you have to look at the script and the role that you’re playing, but you [also] have to look at the producer, the director, to know since you’re going to be vulnerable there, you want to have some sort of trust walking in.

Ben Kingsley: I think there’s a huge amount of trust involved. But trust means you can take risks. And I love taking risks. And if I feel the trust is there, then I can really go the extra 9 yards for them. So, it’s a chemical mix of a great script, a director with whom I can work and have a wonderful time with and fellow actors that are a joy. That doesn’t always come together, but certainly from my end of the spectrum in “Iron Man 3”, all three came together.

Ron Bennington: And when you say, they all have to come together – anyone of them, I guess, is going to ruin what else is happening. Any part of that can ruin it.

Ben Kingsley: Because it’s collaborative. It’s entirely collaborative. So, if there is a distracting moment on set, it’s like bursting a balloon. It’s only a pin prick. It’s tiny, but the whole air will collapse in the balloon. You might as well of hit it with a hammer, but it’s just a pin prick. But that’s what happens with a scene. So, the working atmosphere on this film was terrific. So focused and so clean and pure, it was great.

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Ben Kingsley Talks About the Difference Between Theater and Film

Ron Bennington: You originally started on stage, right? Theater work. Is there a big difference between work in theater and film?

Ben Kingsley: How can I put it? There is and there isn’t. If I were a painter, I would say that going from theater to film was like going from being a landscape painter, forests, mountains, oceans, massive landscapes – put my brush down and go towards a blank canvas as a portrait artist. So now, I’m a portrait artist. It’s the detail of that face, the psyche behind the eyes. The close-up is a wonderful thing. And it’s that, that leads me to describing it now more as a portrait artist rather than a landscape painter.

Ron Bennington: But almost a different skill set. It’s almost saying – here you can do this one thing so well, now stop it and put it aside do something similar, but different.

Ben Kingsley: Yeah, but I think I have the kind of temperament to find that really exciting and thrilling – that I can take that kind of a sharp turn in my career and the more sharp turns I can take, the happier I am to be honest.

Ron Bennington: And it is kind of interesting that you could still be challenged at this point of your career. Just think of how many jobs, once you get that job down, you spend the rest of your life just kind of doing it over and over.

Ben Kingsley: Sure, yeah. There may well be happiness within that. Within the bracket of that employment. But everyone’s different. I derive happiness, pleasure, thrill, focus, urgency from the word “change”. Every day is different.

Ron Bennington: Knowing that failure is right there. If you don’t pull off this thing that…this task that you set off, you can fail again.

Ben Kingsley: Oh totally. I mean it’s like the gladiators in ancient Rome. It’s thumbs up or thumbs down. There’s not a middle thumb. (laughs) And that’s exciting. That’s stimulating. That’s very focusing. And of course, there is light and shade. Of course, there is what we call success and of course, there is what we call failure. But you learn from those dark moments. You have to.

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Ron Bennington: But here you have a film that you’re happy with and you’re excited about, what is it like when you have a film that you know it didn’t work out the way that everybody set out for it to work out to do?

Ben Kingsley: It’s hard to resist that wave of disappointment. And it’s hard to resist beating yourself up. The further away you get from those bad experiences, you realize – my goodness, if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have done that. That’s what I mean by light and shade. So you can’t really edit. In order to know the path, so I read one day, you have to stray off the path. And I think there’s something in that.

Ron Bennington: Sir Ben Kingsley, what a terrific thing to have you in here today. I’m a big fan. I’m so glad that you stopped by. “Iron Man 3” comes out in theaters and this is everywhere, Friday, May 3rd. I appreciate you stopping by. I’ll see you next time coming through.

Ben Kingsley: Great. A pleasure. Thank you.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CzoSeClcw0]

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