Gandhi (1982)

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It took me 20 years to get this film made and there were times I thought we'd never do it. I went to every single major company in America who all turned it down. Finally I took the script to Jake Eberts who created Goldcrest. I told him I wanted to make this film and nothing else. I thought Gandhi was a genius for all his idiosyncrasies. He had the most profound affect on us as human beings. Jake rang me the following morning and cried on the phone as he started to describe it. He raised the money from everywhere - private individuals, a banking company, an insurance company and trade unions - not one penny from the industry apart from the BBC.

I suppose the most important thing that I did was to cast Ben. My son Michael told me of an actor currently acting in a play in the RSC in London and who was absolutely brilliant and incidentally had Indian blood. I went to see the play and I was shattered.

I went round to the stage door and got them to ring him up in his dressing room. I said, "Mr Kingsley, I've never met you. My name is Richard Attenborough and I want to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi. Would you test for the part?" There are moments in the film he was so close to Gandhi, it was uncanny. Truly great acting.

For the funeral scene, we broadcast and sent leaflets and newspapers to people all around Delhi. They walked hundreds of miles to be part of the scene because we did it on the day that Gandhi's funeral had taken place. We had turnstiles where people were and we took their clothes off them, we bought anything that wasn't white, because they all had to be in white. It was an extraordinary day. The crowd exceeded 400,000 people.

Lord Attenborough

"He is not a grandiose narcissist who hugs his secrets close to his chest, not parsimonious in his love and knowledge, he is massively generous and extremely empathetic and an actor always feels that there is a solid trampoline on which to jump.

The height the actor can reach on that trampoline are beyond the limits because it is there and tethered, it's safe, I'm not saying that safety is a prerequisite for good acting but the knowledge that you are watched and nourished and cared for by the director and you are included rather than excluded is an enormous gift."

Ben Kingsley Actor, 'Mahatma Gandhi', Gandhi