Top 80 Ben Kingsley Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.”

— Ben Kingsley

52. “Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.”

— Ben Kingsley

53. “I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.”

— Ben Kingsley

54. “I would like to make it known, on this program, loud and clear, that I would absolutely embrace with all five of my arms being a Bond villain.”

— Ben Kingsley

55. “I think that most actors, and they’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people, but I think that they attempt to keep in touch with the child.”

— Ben Kingsley

56. “There is so much to do on a film set. It is an extraordinarily invigorating and wonderful place to be, when things are running well.”

— Ben Kingsley

57. “That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere.”

— Ben Kingsley

58. “I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.”

— Ben Kingsley

59. “As an actor there’s no autonomy, unless you’re prepared to risk the possibility of starving.”

— Ben Kingsley

60. “I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.”

— Ben Kingsley

61. “It’s Sir Ben. I’ve not been a Mister for two years.”

— Ben Kingsley

62. “You want to know what I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared.”

— Ben Kingsley

63. “I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it’s such an extraordinary part of our lives.”

— Ben Kingsley

64. “Well, it’s wonderful to be identified strongly with my work.”

— Ben Kingsley

65. “I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.”

— Ben Kingsley

66. “The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.”

— Ben Kingsley

67. “With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It’s a good exercise to do.”

— Ben Kingsley

68. “I think I’m more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.”

— Ben Kingsley

69. “I have a rather naive approach, I think, to my job.”

— Ben Kingsley

70. “I always try to find something I admire about every character I play.”

— Ben Kingsley

71. “I don’t want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away.”

— Ben Kingsley

72. “I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.”

— Ben Kingsley

73. “I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don’t understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.”

— Ben Kingsley

74. “I do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can’t because they can’t face it.”

— Ben Kingsley

75. “The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.”

— Ben Kingsley

76. “There is always something about the villains that I’m able to play, quote unquote, that isn’t villainous.”

— Ben Kingsley

77. “But filming is good for you, because the crew isn’t allowed to laugh. You can’t get addicted to getting the laugh.”

— Ben Kingsley

78. “Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go.”

— Ben Kingsley

79. “It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.”

— Ben Kingsley

80. “They’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people.”

— Ben Kingsley

81. “There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.”

— Ben Kingsley

82. “But comedy I’d love to do as much as humanly possible.”

— Ben Kingsley

83. “I’m so dependent on reacting to the other actors on the set, and to the director. I’m very responsive. I react. And I treasure the energy that reaction gives.”

— Ben Kingsley

84. “Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It’s harder.”

— Ben Kingsley