Ben Kingsley at the National Film Theatre

Image: Ben Kingsley

Ben Kingsley was interviewed at the National Film Theatre on the 17 September 2003. Hosts: Amanda Nevill, Richard Attenborough, Jonathan Ross.

"The truth is, I don't really want to be a director at all. I just want to direct that film", said Attenborough, and struggled for 20 years to achieve it. The outcome is a sweeping historic panorama, dominated by the small figure of the saintly but indomitably shrewd Mahatma. Featuring an awe-inspiring cast, Gandhi's eight Oscars set a new record for a British film and established the reputation of its then unknown star. The bfi was delighted to welcome Sir Ben Kingsley to the NFT to discuss his work on Gandhi and his career.

Interview © BFI 2003

Gandhi

Amanda Nevill: We're here this evening for a very special screening of Gandhi and it's part of our tribute to Lord Attenborough in his 80th year. On my way walking over the Waterloo Bridge I was trying to work out if I was hoping that there might be people in the audience who'd never seen Gandhi before, because I can say that you're in for the most wonderful few hours in front of you and, of course, those of you that have seen it are already converted, because that's why you're here. It's a fantastic film, not just of course because it's a good film but also because it shows what film can do - the film isn't just about the life of Gandhi, it's also a legacy for the very message that Gandhi himself was trying to put across and I'm sure that this was part of what drove Lord Attenborough to start the project.

We're hugely delighted this evening, as you know, to welcome after the screening Sir Ben Kingsley, but before that, at the end of the screening, what we're going to do is ask you all to please stay in your seats as we have a little surprise for you. We're not quite sure how long that surprise will take, but when the surprise is finished, there will be a 20-minute interval to allow you to go and stretch your legs and then you'll be able to come back in here and meet Sir Ben Kingsley.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please, please enjoy the film and... let's roll. Goodnight.

[applause]

[Film: Gandhi]

[applause]

Richard Attenborough: It is a very long film, isn't it? On the other hand, it's quite a long story to have to tell. And I'm sure whatever its shortcomings are, and they are, after 20 years, so evident it's very distressing, it is nevertheless a wonderful story to have told, and there are things in it, very often said through the brilliant script of Jack Briley, through the genius of the tongue of my friend on my left. It is very difficult indeed to be objective about a film that meant so much and took so long before we were able to make it, but of one thing I am absolutely certain: that if the film carries a distinction beyond its actual subject matter - and there is some distinction granted by the mass of people who helped to make this film - there is one factor that stands unique above them all, and that is the genius - and I use the word advisedly - the genius of Ben's performance.

I do not think the film could ever have achieved the success that it did achieve, both artistically and commercially, were it not for this very, very, very, very remarkable - I was going to say young - man [laughs]. And I really mean that wherever the reviews that have been critical, very often correctly, the one thing there is no equivocation about whatsoever is the brilliance of Ben's performance from the young man - after all this was made 20 years ago - from this young man to that staggering impersonation - and I use the word as a compliment - of Gandhi as the old man. It is extraordinary, Ben, and you are a marvel, and I don't really quite know how you did it at the end of the day, I really don't. I know how you worked, I know how you devoted your mind and your heart and your body, everything, to the creation of this very remarkable man for millions to see all over the world who, in fact, probably had never heard of Mahatmaji before. And so, Ben, I'm going to stop talking with one question: how did you do it? [laughter]

Ben Kingsley: That's even more terrifying than when you used to say 'Action!' [laughter] When I first saw the film, and maybe for a few years after first seeing the film, I asked myself a similar question but I applied it entirely to you, but I'm not dodging the issue, I am trying to answer your question, but I often wondered how you did it, in Indira Gandhi's India, which later became horribly unstable and resulted in her death, and the thousands of imponderables you had to cope with every day, and I used to ask myself how did he do it? And I still do, I still ask myself that. It's a miracle, a collection of thousands of miracles that he oversaw and guided and, with his alchemy, transformed into a film.

But you asked me a question, okay, and it has taken me a long time to perhaps analyse how I did it and certainly one great Englishman is responsible for how I developed the technique for that and that was probably William Shakespeare, because I did fifteen years with the RSC, with the National Theatre. Trevor Nunn guided me lovingly though my whole Royal Shakespeare career and I happened to be there when you found me, so I think that the stamina, the marathon stamina that you required of your actor, I probably developed on great texts during my Shakespeare tenancy, if you like.

And then, as I say, the epic nature that you required, I did some study, but then Jack's script, really, was all the preparation I needed as an actor. It was contained within those hundred or so pages. The intelligence of the man that we had to put on the screen, the overwhelming intelligence and decency of the man. And for many years I still wondered how you caught that, of me, on the screen, and I think you know the answer to this - and I'm sorry if it embarrasses you - but when you are in the presence of greatness, profound decency, and a great man, it maybe takes some years for that arrogance that I had when I was in my thirties when I made the film - and I apologise for my arrogance, and you witnessed it, and you forgave it, and we carried on - but I honestly thought for a few years that that was me, that it was my performance on the screen and of course that's nonsense, it is not me, it's a collection of guided molecules that would otherwise have been completely random and directionless, were it not for the fact that there was one titanic guiding light on the film set and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word and by a process of osmosis - and I still hope I am learning from this wonderful man on my right - the performance came from him, I now see, I now see on the screen certain ways in which Gandhiji greets people, how he treats every single individual in his life as somebody precious, valued and never never to be humiliated, but uplifted and elevated. My guiding light was not learning to spin or having my trailer lined with photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, or my yoga classes - that's the mechanics, Dick, that's the mechanics of it. But the true guiding light, my yardstick of decency, intelligence and a profound respect for my fellow men was finally pushed out of my larynx and onto the screen - into a performance that is - it's based on you, it belongs to you, you are my guiding light and that is how I did it. We did it together, okay will you accept that? [laughter and applause]

RA: Just.

BK: Okay.

RA: He talks more nonsense than anyone I've ever met.

You want to listen to Ben, and I want to listen to Ben and if you'd like to leave the auditorium for about fifteen minutes, Ben will come back, but he'll come back, and I think very wisely and very sensibly not with me, because I'm so hopelessly involved in this one picture, but with somebody who really will, I hope give him a tough time and ask him a lot of questions and allow you to ask a lot of questions. So, in a few moments, Jonathan Ross will come and talk to Ben and I'm going to sit back there with Sheila and listen to every word that he says.

BK: You didn't tell me you were staying. You didn't tell me you were staying. [laughter].

RA: ...and boo if it's necessary [laughter]. And now let us do by far the most important thing, because I certainly have to do it, and that's to have a wee-wee. [laughter and applause].

[break]

Jonathan Ross: Just a few words before Sir Ben comes back to join us. Of course it's a fantastic experience, seeing that movie again on the big screen, and a very special thing to see Sir [sic] Richard and Sir Ben afterwards there, really, two of the most talented individuals working in film today still, have ever been I suspect. I can only therefore assume that I am here just to kind of even the balance up a little bit [laughter]. So I speak for the rest of us this evening.

The way the evening pans out normally at these things - and they're always fun and hopefully informative and, you know, quite memorable - is that I will introduce our esteemed guest in a second and I will chat to him a little bit, asking him some questions, we'll look at a selection of clips from some of his films and then for the final 20 minutes or so of the hour we have coming up we'll be taking questions from the audience and Ben will answer your questions, so if you have something that you'd like to ask him or something comes up, please keep it in your head so that we have some good informative questions at the end, not just ones about 'how can I get into drama school?' and 'can you introduce me to a director who's looking for my type?'

I've said more than enough already, I suspect. Would you please join me in welcoming - and I hope you are as excited as I am because I have nothing but admiration for this man's work - Sir Ben Kingsley.

[applause]

JR: Now, I don't know if you need to pour some water to get started and get comfy there. It must be quite an experience I would have thought, seeing Gandhi again on the big screen.

BK: It was a very, very good print and sometimes, you know, one is distracted by a bad print or a bad sound quality. It's a beautiful auditorium and an extremely good print, wasn't it, Dick? I'm sure you agree. I hadn't seen it for about fifteen years, on a big screen, maybe longer. I think you gathered, those of you who were here after the screening, when Lord Attenborough and I came on stage, that we were both pretty overwhelmed by the memories, by the profound affection we have for one another and by my much lesser struggle to make that film than my colleague Dickie's. He struggled for 20 years; I for a mere nine months, but, nevertheless it's a performance that's very close to my heart and I don't know whether there's a succinct answer to your question other than saying that I was somewhat shaky at the end of the film and lots of memories and enormous pride in the fact that I worked with one of the greatest men in the world.

JR: Well, it's a fantastic achievement, as I'm sure you are both aware. An incredible performance, I mean a really properly remarkable performance from you in that film and here's someone who's coming along who, most people probably weren't aware of, certainly cinema-goers. I know that you'd been in some films...

BK: ...I was in Coronation Street!... [laughter]

JR: 1966, I believe, is that right? How long were you actually in Corrie for?

BK: I were there for three episodes! [laughter]

JR: Now the storyline there where Gandhi appeared in the Rovers Return, that wasn't a popular one... [laughter] Anyway... but I'm curious, when you look at yourself on screen now, when you see that performance, are you thinking about the performance you gave then, obviously, to an extent you're caught up in the movie I imagine, but are you thinking about the performance, are you thinking about the man you were then, are you thinking about what it means to you? It must be quite something.

BK: Well you're right, I think it's all of the above. Certainly I was aware of the comradeships that were forged during the film. I was very happy to be reminded of the extraordinary friendship that I was on the receiving end of from Roshan Seth [who played Pandit Nehru]. I would say that - I hope I'm answering the question, I do meander a lot. Sorry, I'll try and stay focused...

JR: We're here to listen, you meander wherever you want and we'll follow.

BK: Okay... but I did recall meeting Roshan, believe it or not, for the screen test for both roles before he knew that he had the role, but I did know that I had my role. He is an immensely intelligent, graceful man and I would imagine that by some strange act of mathematics, because life is balanced - things are balanced in life - and things for me have a kind of mathematics, emotional mathematics, and there's mathematics between life and art and there was the same equation between Roshan and I that I suspect existed between Pandit Nehru and Gandhi, in that he was a rock to me, he opened my eyes to India because I knew India not at all. I mean I had never been before in my life and it was Roshan who took me to villages, he took me to very poor villages, he took me to Old Delhi. He walked me round the streets till two or three in the morning and he would show me things, he would introduce me to people and he educated me in the India that I was not acquainted with. And I think that was the backbone of our working relationship. I think his performance is exquisite.

It's always very touching when you find a character on the screen who is fiercely defending your character, and when the young Black Flag movement - the extreme Hindu nationalist movement that has not, as yet, disappeared from the face of the Earth, I am very sorry to say - when they say 'Death to Gandhi' and he pushes his way back into the crowd and shouts 'who said that? Who dares say that? Kill me first,' I always think 'that's my mate...' [laughter] '...that's my mate sticking up for me.' I really feel terribly moved, but there was a parallel between that character's loyalty to my character and his profound friendship with mine, and all these wonderful friendships and relationships came back to me, the depth of their involvement, the comradeship and the singular focus that I eluded to earlier, that of course was guided by Dick.

JR: I'd like to ask one more Gandhi-related question before we move on to some of the other films, which is obviously you formed life-long friendships on that film. It changed your life in other ways, winning the Academy Award I'm sure had a profound effect on your career as an actor. But internally I get the feeling that there were changes that, studying the man and actually playing the man on screen happened to you, or happened because of the experience.

BK: Well, you know that I've been asked this question before, but what you don't know is that I think I've evaded the answer. I think I've made lazy, predictable answers to this question. I think that I've concocted some spiritual transformation that I suppose people would expect might have take place in me. The absolute truth is - and as we celebrate his birthday over the last two months - I really believe that the profound inspiration was being in the presence of Richard, who was achieving one of his great ambitions, and to be with a man who is in his own state of grace, and radiant in having his ambition fulfilled, and empowered totally by being in the position of producer-director, and using that power with such grace and such gentility, greeting every single actor, who was on our screen for seconds and who was on the set for one day, as if that actor were carrying the moral centre of the film.

But the reason why Richard does this and the reason why tonight I see what a beautiful process, embracing one's fellows, Richard embarks on daily, is when I watch the railway [sic] pulling into the station where all the Indigoworkers are on strike and the young officer asks Bernard Hill [who plays Sergeant Putnam] 'who the hell is he?' 'I don't know, sir... I don't know.' That line, that line of Bernard's, that you beautifully directed, having welcomed Bernard onto your set, and empowered Bernard to say one line in the middle of a three-and-a-quarter hour film, so beautifully, that gives my character charisma. I cannot act charisma, the charisma comes from these extraordinary people that you placed around me who say with awe and fear and expectation 'I don't know, sir.' One line, and the whole film is lifted onto some messiah-like level. So that attention to detail, that generosity, that extraordinary rapport with every individual on the set, really, looking back, it's that that left traces, I hope one or two trace elements of the great man himself, hopefully still knocking around in my system.

JR: Well it's a film which, you know, I saw when it first came out. It's always stayed with me and I'm sure everyone who saw it again this evening is also moved by it now. It's a remarkable achievement. All the more so considering that your acting career almost never took off when, I believe, you were refused admission to RADA... quite forcibly.

BK: They let my son in. They let Edmund in! [laughter] and he had three wonderful years there and is now rehearsing his first job. I auditioned for RADA and it was in the days before, for professional reasons, I decided to change... the greatest irony is that I changed my name from Krishna Bhanji to Ben Kingsley in order to play Mahatma Gandhi [laughter]. That is an extraordinary irony. However, that was my birth name because my grandparents on my father's side actually came from Gujurat. Richard didn't know this by the way, had no idea of this until we were well into the filming. However, Krishna Bhanji, full of confidence, having learned his audition speeches, went to RADA, and was sitting in the anteroom that you sit in before you're called onto the stage to audition. And enter the bursar or... the man they employ to terrify students anyway. He came with a clipboard and he worked through the five or six people who were waiting to audition. And he worked through his list and he got to 'Kristina Blainge' and he said 'Kristina Blainge?' and we all looked round... 'Kristina Blainge...' and I thought 'God, that's me. That's my awful handwriting, and he's misread Kristina-Krishna and Blainge-Bhanji and he thinks Kristina Blainge is going to audition.' So I had to say 'well actually I'm Kristina Blainge' and then I had to go and audition, so by that time the wind had been completely taken out of my sails. Fortunately I did do an audition, maybe two or three weeks after that, for Theatre in Education group, T.I.E., in London, and they offered me a job and then I decided on Kingsley as a career name and, in a sense I think it was freeing. I think that had I not done that, I think in the sixties anyway, it might have been somewhat limited and I do come back to the irony that I'm convinced that had I not changed my name, I don't think I would have had quite the same career curve that I eventually had and I don't think that Richard and I would ever have met. Who knows? It's a series of little... another bit of mathematics that may or may not have happened. But I did not get into RADA, that's for sure.

JR: Were you thinking of a career in films at that stage, or was theatre always your first love, because I know you had many early successes... I know fans of theatre of that period still talk very lovingly of your appearance in Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I believe you then took to Broadway...

BK: Yes we did.

Murderers among Us

JR: You were obviously a success on stage, there was no doubt about it. Was it something you wanted to do, to move into films, or did it just kind of happen?

BK: I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe six or seven, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew. And some people have little invisible helpers, some people have dwarves, some people have elves and goblins and fairies and I had a film crew. And it was the adventures of me and they'd be filming The Adventures of Me and... the film was all about me. [laughter] I went through grammar school, I wasn't particularly strong in the dramatic society, the drama group. I left Manchester Grammar School with abysmal A-level results. I then had a year's hiatus where I didn't know what to do at all. I then joined an amateur dramatic society in Salford where something in me exploded as if... you know when you hold a - I'm sure you do this all the time in your spare time - when you hold a cork under water...

JR: Yeah, I thought you were going to say 'a banger up a cat's arse' for a minute, I didn't know where you were going with this particular analogy... [laughter]

BK: No, just a cork under water, nothing more flamboyant...

JR: Different backgrounds...

BK: Manchester Grammar School, you see, I'm sorry, cork under water, physics... and you let go of the cork - it will shoot to the surface... and somebody let go of the cork in me, it shot to the surface, I was very very happy on stage. I was given some smashing roles and I was told from there that I must audition and try and do it professionally, but it was fifteen years in the theatre, the invisible camera crew disappeared and I was working hard rehearsing and playing on stage.

JR: But I'm intrigued. Why did that happen then? What was it about that period, I mean, what age were you then, you were early twenties I guess?

BK: Yes. 20... 21... and by the time I was 22 I was at Chichester Festival Theatre and at 22 auditioned for Trevor Nunn, bless him, who, when I was 23, allowed me to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. And then I found the absolute thrill of translating ancient poetic text into totally visceral, tangible and even relevant, immediate and urgent language. I did Hamlet in '75 which, through a chain of coincidences, led me to meeting Richard and that was a modern-dress Hamlet. I was thrilled by Shakespeare. It surprised me, my profound delight in deciphering Shakespeare and making it completely flesh-and-blood.

JR: That's still, I guess, a thrill when you're working on stage. Cinema's a very different experience. You were talking earlier about the script for Gandhi and you said that the man was all there. It was in the script. You had it there. You don't have to do that work, I guess, when you're working in a movie. There isn't that level of deciphering. Intellectually, is that less satisfying for you? Is that something that you miss from your stage work?

BK: Intellectually, it's a different exercise. I know that Dickie's given a beautiful definition of the difference between film and theatre which I will always quote, shamelessly, and you say that film is the integrity of the moment, and theatre is the integrity of the event. However, the integrity of the moment between 'Action' and 'Cut,' when it is going to be scrutinised as a piece of narrative drama for as long as that film or DVD or mechanical recording lasts, you are committing yourself, in those moments, the possibility of being heard by your great great great grandchildren. So there's a different kind of intellectual weight to that moment, but it is decidedly there, depending on the kind of film that you're making, but it is there. And the number of choices you make in the event that you see on stage, those choices are sometimes largely determined by the rehearsal process and the experiments that you go through and the choices that you make in the rehearsal room, not in front of an audience. And then there are some fluctuations within those choices in the live performance with an audience of that play, but nevertheless, it is a beautiful ritual, if I may be not damned in Hell for saying that.

Whereas I find in front of the camera, it absolutely thrilling to commit to eternity, possibly, a series of choices that I have to make between 'Action' and 'Cut' that had never, never, never been made before - in a rehearsal room, in a workshop, in a debate, in a dressing room. When the director says 'Action' I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative between the words 'Action' and 'Cut' and therefore what the audience see is the character behaving, rather than me acting. So I think I found, in film - and I think that's why I've stayed in film for longer than I stayed in theatre - I think I found that intellectual balance and I think I found a way of being totally thrilled by the challenge of: 'Action,' and then there's an arc of creation that comes from a disciplined spontaneity - if that's not a contradiction in terms; and then on 'Cut' and then on 'Print it' if the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or two minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.

JR: And has that got easier for you, this kind of disciplined spontaneity, because you must be assured and comfortable in your reputation and your abilities now.

BK: I try not to make it easy for myself. I try very hard to stay in the moment. I'm not an actor who psyches himself up for a take. I do the opposite. I actually try and reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce and get to what I call a flat line or a zero. My adrenaline is very high the word 'Action.' My adrenaline starts to pump on 'Turn over.' The slate is marked 'Turn over, sound running' and by the time 'Action' is called, I'm a hopping maniac, and if I didn't have that disciplined channel to pour this maniacal energy into, I'd probably go berserk, but between 'Action' and 'Cut' that's where I think the spontaneity comes. It doesn't get any easier. I still get very nervous and excited, but I'm hoping... what I'm trying to do is simplify. That's what I'm trying to do.

JR: That's a fantastic answer, if I may say so. There's a remarkable range of performances that we could touch upon and to some extent that's evident in the clips we have to show, but before we get onto the clips, there's something we don't have a clip of, which was another remarkable performance from you, I thought, and one that I found moving and memorable and it ties in with Gandhi to an extent because you're playing yet another real-life character in Murderers among Us [Brian Gibson, 1989] where you play Simon Wiesenthal. Incredible performance - and I notice as well that you've played quite a few... you have brought to the screen quite a number of actual individuals. Is that something that is particularly easy for you to do, or is that something which you like working with?

BK: Gosh. I think that again, if I can return to Shakespeare, I think I developed a great love and wonder for portraying epic personalities on an epic landscape. Men who find themselves in the eye of the storm, not by choice but by circumstance and very often Shakespeare portrays in his fictitious characters very, very parallel dilemmas where suddenly the weight of the world is on that person's shoulders. I did find this thrilling in my work on Shakespeare and then I think that I perhaps developed a taste for it and maybe had some kind of a marathon-style discipline in approaching these characters, and then through Dickie's remarkable offer to me - it was like a forensic study, a close study of a pattern of behaviour. It came from history, which is very exciting. It could have come from Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or Greek tragedy because all the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour - that it why Hamlet is a great role, because Hamlet is probably sitting in this auditorium now. It's a true, real person. I met Simon Wiesenthal. I met him in Vienna and I had lunch with him. I witnessed his survivor's guilt first-hand. I witnessed him describing the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp by the Americans in May '45. I witnessed the profound waves of emotion that he was trying to deal with and balance in his own old body, and that gave me some minuscule, tiny pin-hole camera into the true horrors of the Holocaust, which are incomprehensible, indescribable, unforgettable, possibly unforgivable and how one gets these figures onto the screen is perhaps by having the privilege of holding a survivor's hands and looking at the tattoos on the arm and just listening to them cry and tell their own story. I have had that privilege and it's been with me three times in my acting career.

JR: By way of bridging from that into one of the lighter films you've made, I'm curious as to how you approach the parts and whether there's a difference in your approach to it and your working method, when you're making a film such as Gandhi, you're portraying Wiesenthal or you're say, for example, Schindler's List [Steven Spielberg, 1993] which, I imagine, you're alluding to there, or referring to. Do you approach those differently, bearing in mind the enormity of the issue, the serious intent of the project, then - we're now going to see you playing Watson in Without a Clue [Thom Eberhardt, 1988] - which is a fabulous film and marvellous on-screen chemistry with Michael Caine, but is that an entirely different experience or is it similar in most ways?

BK: There's definitely a common root. There's definitely a common source. One of my favourite equations, if it's of any help to the audience in answering your question is that if, for example, I'm asked by Richard to play Gandhi, knowing that Richard's mandate was not to portray him as a saint, but to portray him with all his flaws and foibles, I therefore tried very hard - and it's lovely to see it with an audience - to find the wit and the irony and the lighter side of the man, because history takes care of the rest, and when I do a comedy, I again look for the opposites, so in Doctor Watson, he has his dignity and his slight arrogance and pomposity punctured all the time, but it will only be amusing to an audience to have that punctured if I try very hard to be not funny, but dignified, try very hard not to be amusing, but wise, and have this image completely shattered by Michael every few minutes on the screen but I had to hold on to the wise, the dignified and the sensible one of the pair. So in a sense it's turning it upside-down, which I enjoy doing.

JR: Let's have a look, let's remind ourselves. I don't know how many of you have seen this movie. Curiously, I watched it about six months ago. I dug it out and watched it because I just fancied it and it's so much fun. I'm not sure which clip we have here...

BK: I think it's fairly early on in the film, where we both enter our house in London and it's revealed that Sherlock Holmes is a total fake and the real detective genius is Doctor Watson.

JR: Let's have a look...

[clip: Without a Clue]

JR: That really is one of the oldest jokes in the history of cinema...

BK: They work, don't they?

JR: Yeah - it's great. How is it, working with someone like Michael Caine, who essentially comes purely from a cinema acting background? I know he'd done a little theatre work early in his career, but essentially we think of him as being a film actor, and indeed that's where he's spent most of his professional life.

BK: I learned a lot from Michael. He is word perfect when he comes to the set. If he's in a trailer next to you, you can hear him pacing up and down the trailer saying all his lines, constantly working until he goes onto the set, very, very well prepared, as I say, and then will have a relationship with a boom operator, so the boom operator knows all of Michael's moves, sudden or slow, so the boom operator will be able to follow him. Focus puller, so the focus puller has the perfect choreography of what Michael's going to do. He rehearses, not to perfect his acting, he's done that in his trailer, he rehearses to make sure that all the other chaps around him are going to get the very best out of the take, and having built that rapport - and it's not because Michael wants to be one of the boys, it's because he's a real professional, and he will talk to them on first-name terms: the continuity person, the script person, the script supervisor, the focus puller, dolly operator, boom operator, every single person on the set, he will have a working, decent rapport with, so that when it's time to do the take, everybody's on the same page, there's nothing unpredictable, there's nothing 'spontaneous' about it, but the purity of the performance is captured maybe in take one or take two, because everyone knows what they're doing, thanks to Michael, and everyone on the set is hugely appreciative of that, and I learned a lot working with him.

JR: I can't imagine Michael Caine next to you wanting to experiment too much when the cameras are rolling, but there are actors, of course, who do delight in that, and seem to look forward to their performance, you know, in the moment. Do you enjoy working with that kind of actor?

BK: I do. I do. It's an entirely different discipline from mine but I do despair sometimes. I was working with an actor recently who was so passionate to get into the role of a... borderline personality case, to say the least, that he would be shouting and screaming and pumping up and doing press-ups before the take and kicking the furniture - and hurting his hand once he banged it so hard - and on 'Action' he forgot all his lines! [laughter] Forgot everything, he'd exhausted the character off the set and arrived a wreck.

JR: And then how did you deal with that? Did you have to work around that?

BK: Patience [laughter]... a lot of patience.

JR: That must be a lot of fun. Let me talk about some of the other performances we think of you in - we're working up towards Schindler's List. We've got Bugsy [Barry Levinson, 1991] next that we're going to look at a clip from. Now here's a movie which strikes one as being about as far removed from Gandhi as you can get in some ways. It's not a star vehicle in the worst sense of the word, but of course it's a movie which I imagine found finance because of Warren Beatty's involvement. It was the pet project of his, I believe, for some time. He only really commits to projects that he cares about to that extent. It's a Hollywood film essentially, that's what I'm saying. What are the differences? What's it like working within that sort of framework?

BK: I'm sorry, but I think it's more of the same. I found in Meyer Lansky [Kinglsey's character in Bugsy], what intrigued me was that he came from the shtetlsof Russia and he came from Russia as a Russian Jew in maybe the late 19th century, very early 20th century. He therefore survived pogroms. He therefore knew how to bribe and pay off the policemen, the baker, the butcher, the landlord. They probably survived those terrible shtetlsand the pogroms by the Cossacks by knowing everybody. In other words they were organised and they were involved in some fringe activities to ensure their survival as a tribe. This migrated to America and I think with Meyer, that same, slightly warped sense of being a patriarch was applied to protectionism, crime, but in a sense the shtetlwas transposed to New York and he was paying off and bribing and buying people because that was how, as a kid, he genuinely believed that's how you survived. This is how I approached the character anyway - I'm trying not to moralise, I'm trying to understand and empathise with his behaviour, his patriarchal behaviour. And strangely enough he was a patriarch.

JR: And how much of that was in the script and how much of that was you bringing it to the project?

BK: It was Jimmy Toback - a beautiful script, a beautifully written script and there were strong resonances of the patriarch and how he was admired from the fellow characters and from the fellow players, so that the basic map was there but when I started to work on my New York voice and accent I realised that if I just put a little bit of Russian in there, a little dash of paprika in the cooking, you know, that I would probably find Meyer, and then I heard some recordings of him when he was in his 70s, when I think a reporter asked him 'how are you, Meyer,' and he said 'just what you see.' And I love that, I love that wonderful gesture, pure answer: 'just what you see.' It's a beautiful answer. I've tried it, when people ask me how am I and I say 'just what you see,' and they say 'no, but how are you?' [laughter] They don't get it at all!

JR: Let's have a look then, this is Sir Ben in Bugsy.

[clip: Bugsy]

Sexy Beast

JR: A nice clip, showing the smartness of the script there. The movie didn't do as well, I don't think, as we might have expected. It wasn't a big hit. To what extent is that important for you; to what extent do you look at your work afterwards and try and analyse why some things click with an audience and others don't?

BK: It might be a gap, I might have a circuit missing there. I tend very much to stay in the present. I'm not very good at analysing past strategies and choices, so I don't have an answer to that question. The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed. I personally was very gratified by the film because I was nominated for a Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Meyer Lansky. And, I had a letter from the Lansky family, which I opened with trembling hands, and it was from Meyer's nephew and I thought 'okay, the game's up... concrete shoes and a canal somewhere,' [laughter] and they said that they liked the way I portrayed their uncle. He was a very nice man. They liked the way I portrayed him. I did him proud.

JR: And you carry that letter with you whenever you travel to America...

BK: I do. [laughter]

JR: Let's talk about Schindler's List. Something's just occurred to me, thinking about the films that have done well and those that haven't perhaps done as well. The movies in which you're not actually working with 'the big stars' in the Hollywood sense like Warren Beatty. They're the ones that seem to have done better, the ones that actually do rely more on the audience coming to them from the point of view of the story, for the performances. Is there something in that, do you think, I mean is there a greater pressure on a movie to be convincing, to work successfully an audience despite the fact there's a star involved?

BK: I don't know. I have a rather na-ve approach, I think, to my job. I still think of myself as a storyteller and I think a lot of my energy will go into being a storyteller, rather than perhaps hoping that it will be a vehicle for me. And whilst I do take very seriously the story told about Paul Mooney, by a very famous contemporary star of his and she said 'he was a wonderful, wonderful actor, but the sovereignty of the actor disappeared behind the character.' In other words, she felt that he'd crossed a certain line. I'm not quite sure whether the sovereignty of my acting disappears behind my character, I don't think I become entirely faceless because, whilst I love telling stories, there's a little bit of ego knocking around that still says 'and it is me helping to tell this story,' so there's still a little boy with the invisible film crew following him around.

But I think that I'm more, perhaps because of the theatre and my first fifteen years in the theatre, I think I'm more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies, rather than 'hey, this would be a great vehicle for a, b and c.' Maybe it's a na-ve approach, maybe it's not a very businesslike approach, but it's always what attracts me, and maybe because it attracts me at a very fundamental level, the whole project has a different kind of energy and I do believe that it is that energy, that wonderful energy of the ancient craft of storytelling that will ignite something in the listeners, rather than 'you've gotta love this guy, you've gotta love this girl in this movie.' What does that mean, 'you've gotta love this guy,' it doesn't get us anywhere in terms of telling the story about our humanity, about us. It's all about 'you've gotta love this guy.' That doesn't really interest me at all.

JR: There's a strange thing going on there, because obviously people do like seeing familiar actors in roles because often you like to see how they've changed or what they bring to it and they bring certain qualities to it. But I often wonder whether people are banking with the right thing there when they go there. Let's talk about Schindler's List then because here, in a way, the star of this film, before it opened, would have been the director, because people are keen to see Spielberg movies, but many people were concerned and curious as to whether Spielberg, previously known for family-orientated films with strange creatures living the woods that come from green planets, could pull off something like this, was the right person to helm this. Was that a concern of yours?

BK: No. It was not a concern of mine. I loved Empire of the Sun [1987] and other extraordinary films that he'd made where he deals with death, where he deals with childhood, where he deals with the afterlife, destiny, coincidence, fate, slavery, humiliation. I felt that... maybe it's selective viewing. Maybe I'm seeing what I want to see. But I saw the great storyteller and I think that he is a shaman amongst film-makers. I think he's a profoundly prophet-like and gifted storyteller. I met him while he was filming Jurassic Park [1993] and I was on the lot filming something else at the time and he asked me to visit the set and to talk to him about Schindler's List which I had read because Steve Zaillian wrote Schindler's List and Steve directed me in Searching for Bobby Fischer [1993]. I'd read the book, I'd read the script, it was a definite offer for me to do it and I had been quite severely bruised, soul-wise, by portraying Simon. It was overwhelmingly painful and 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.

I remember going to the lot where Steven was filming Jurassic Park and this huge tyrannosaurus rex was... he was playing with it, he had this automatic thingand it kept on listening to me like a dog and watching me and he was toying with it and toying with me. I didn't feel, although I loved him and what he did, my doubts were not about Steven, my doubts were whether or not I had the strength to go back into that period of history and face it again. I had two meetings with him, the second one we sat down again in his office and I was emboldened to ask him what he considered was the narrative role of Itzhak Stern in his film. What did he want Stern to be in narrative terms? What part of the story did he want Stern to tell? I had a word at the back of my head and I was praying that either he would say it, so I would be in the movie and the suffering would be over and I would make a decision, or be so off the mark that I would say 'Steven, I don't think this is going to work.' But my word and his word were practically identical. My word was 'witness' and his word was 'conscience.' I felt that I would only make it work if Steven, in his magnificent generosity and brilliance would allow me to be the witness of the film and he said 'I want you to be the conscience of the film' and therefore there was no escape, I mean I was stuck. After that exchange I was completely hooked and we went to Poland and made the film, and it was a very painful and beautiful film to make.

JR: And an incredible film to watch as well. A hard film to watch, to an extent, as any films to deal with this subject sensibly are. The clip we have to look at now is from near the end of the film, I believe, is that correct?

BK: Yes, he's about to be deported... transported.

JR: Schindler's List...

[Clip: Schindler's List]

JR: Probably the single worst print of Schindler's List in existence... It's a strange life you lead, a strange job you have because, especially with the challenging and interesting choices you've taken on in your career, because you're playing these kinds of characters. When a film like that ends, when the shooting's over, is there a sense of relief, you can walk away from it now, or is there a wrench, that you've been through that, you've given that kind of performance and given of yourself like that and then you have to leave it. What is it that you feel?

BK: Well you've asked after a clip of Schindler's List so I'd love to answer that question with regard to Schindler's List because it's a wonderful example, it's one way of dealing with a loss because it's a terrible loss when a film disbands and breaks up. Steven is an extraordinary man and he manages to stage-manage his scheduling of the film to the best possible benefit of the actors, their performance and their energies and sensibilities, so that we were able to go to Israel to film the survivors of Schindler's list and their relatives laying a stone on OskarSchindler's grave as a righteous gentile. I had on my arm Itzhak Stern's widow, so my character was walking with my character's widow. There were ghosts there and I think that when we all placed a stone on Schindler's grave - and it was Oskar's grave, it was the grave, and when dear Liam [Neeson] places the rose on the grave at the end of the film, that was the last thing we shot, and therefore Steven, in his gift - I think that's the right word - in his gift to us, allowed us to leave with a sense of closure, with a sense of wounds closing rather than opening and a great sense of achievement by bringing us all to Israel and allowing all of us to meet the surviving relatives, so I met the beautiful nieces of Itzhak Stern and I spoke with his family. It doesn't always end like that, film don't always end with that wonderful, beautiful symphonic conclusion like the end of a Beethoven symphony, where there is such peace and such redemption in those cellos as they just come blurring in underneath and he managed to do that with his whole cast of Schindler's List. It isn't always the case; I think a great director is able to conclude things with grace and he was able to do that and I remember Gandhi ending in a very similar way. But it's very, very difficult when you break up because you are bonded with them and you are all fighting and creating with the same goal in mind, if it's a good project.

JR: Are there directors out there who you are keen to work with, who you are actively campaigning to try and get work with, or do they very much come to you?

BK: There's probably a young director, male or female, out there somewhere, I don't even know their names, but maybe I'm destined to work with them, and we'll have an extraordinary relationship. I would love to work with Claire Denis because I think she's extraordinary and I think her Beau Travail [1999] was weird and wonderful and beautiful. There are other non-English, Asian, Mexican... many, many directors I'd love to work with of different nationalities because a different national temperament and a different rhythm and a different way of looking at things is enlightening to work with. But probably there is a wonderful young first-time director out there, I don't even know their names, but I know that when I meet them something will pop inside me, the cork will rise to the surface and I will say 'there you are, let's do some work, let's get down to business.'

JR: Well if we're talking about young first-time directors, it brings us very neatly to Sexy Beast [Jonathan Glazer, 2000], of course...

BK: I loved meeting Jonathan. At my first meeting with Jonathan, within five seconds I sat down in his office and I said 'we have a lot to talk about.' I felt a kindred spirit immediately.

JR: An incredible debut. I know he'd worked in music videos and commercials before that, but an incredibly assured debut...

BK: Confident, graceful, wonderful, wonderful man.

JR: And a terrific film in that it seems to very much swim against the stream of contemporary British cinema when dealing with that kind of subject. I mean we're used to the kind of Lock-Stock-ery that was going on around that time. Here you have a different piece of work altogether. And, if I may say so, an incredible performance. I know I've got my nose firmly wedged up your arse... [laughter]

BK: I thought we were using the cork analogy...

JR: No, the banger's the one you want to watch out for... you find yourself drawn there like a homing missile because, really, a performance that I had not expected from you, this sort of dominant and threatening and aggressive and crazed character on screen. What draws you to that part? What do you look for when you're working with that team? Was there a part of you that wanted to show your range off to that extent?

BK: I had no idea until the script arrived at my home and I opened the first pages and just like opening the first pages of Gandhi by Jack, I was in tears and all the hairs on my arm were standing up. I read Sexy Beast and then this Don Logan arrived in the film and all the hairs on my arm shot up and I could practically see the character saying... 'come here... come here... you...' Completely seduced by him and a resonance inside me because I think if we are privileged to be storytellers - and I think it's a very extraordinary place to occupy in our tribe - if we are privileged then I think one of the responsibilities of that privilege is to keep reminding people, constantly, that there is, there is the Mahatma Gandhi and the Don Logan in every single person in that room, in this room and it is evasive and wrong and misleading to suggest otherwise. It is only circumstance that dictates whether we are angels or devils, whether we're damned or blessed. Circumstance... and people have been, as I said earlier, crushed and distorted and forced into all kinds of strange postures as human beings because of circumstance. I don't know what monsters and demons would be in me if I felt that violence was the only way out of a very dark corner, but I do know, I have to accept, that just as I was able to access, through knowing Dick, a way to portray Mahatma Gandhi, from a centre I know that there is also balance, mathematics, I know that Don Logan is in there too.

JR: Right, let's keep him in there, shall we, for a while, because I really wouldn't want to meet him. But it's such a remarkable performance... I'm not sure where this clip is from, but this is from Sexy Beast that I'm sure you'll all be familiar with. But this is just one fantastic performance.

[clip: Sexy Beast]

JR: Well, that is some performance. I've sat through far more than my fair share of bad films, and so I'm aware of how difficult it must be to get it right, and when you think about the alchemy that needs to go into... juggling all the different components, making something which works, to see something which really is so much better than it needs to be, really transcends all the difficulties, it's remarkable, so thank you, really, I suppose. It's a fantastic piece of work. I think maybe now would be a good time to get some questions from the audience, after a bit of Sexy Beast. We have a gentleman over there...

Audience member: When you were young and starring in The Adventures of You, who were your acting heroes and inspirations?

BK: I think one of my main moments of inspiration was when I was about five: there was a black and white film called Don't Take No for an Answer [Never Take No for an Answer, Maurice Cloche, 1951] and it involved a little Italian boy whose donkey was very poorly, and the little Italian boy walked the donkey all the way from his village to the Vatican for his donkey to be blessed by the Pope. And His Holiness, his chambers were not large enough to let the donkey through the door, so the Vatican workforce demolished a wall to let the donkey in, and the last frames of the film, I remember, was the little boy walking the donkey in to meet the pope, and the angels coming up, the soundtrack, and the room flooding with beautiful light through the builders' dust, and His Holiness blessing the donkey. Now, the little boy in that film looked remarkably like me as a five-year-old and I think the little boy was called Peppito, let's say for the sake of the story that he's called Peppito [The character was actually called Peppino - played by Vittorio Manunta]. I went to the cinema in Salford with my parents to see Don't Take No for an Answer and as I walked into the foyer the manager went 'It's little Peppito!' [laughter]. He rushed at me and lifted me up above the crowd in the foyer, yelling 'It's little Peppito, it's little Peppito!' and I was lifted up - sort of praised and applauded for being the star of the film. So that maybe was my first injection of a very dangerous drug. So little Peppito was my hero, and my fellow players were the Pope and a donkey.

JR: Did you have though, were there actors, when you were growing up, maybe after, shall we call it, the Peppito phase in your development, actors who you admired, being aware of them as actors, as opposed to when most of us at an early age see films and we think of the characters as just existing as they are. Were you aware of the art of acting, the craft of acting, people who were better than others at it?

BK: I don't know whether it's in retrospect, or whether I was aware at the time, but I think it's probably honest to say that there's a certain powerful stillness that I remember admiring tremendously as I grew up. And that would be Spencer Tracy... and Bogart and that particular approach to the work. The stillness, the economy, the grace of that work, so they would have been then, my heroes on the screen as in the fifties we acquired the television and began to see old movies on the screen, movies from the forties, so all when I was tiny.

JR: Those were the ones you were really aware of.

BK: Yes.

JR: Another question?

Audience member: I did not see Gandhi when it was released, I was not yet born, but every time I need inspiration I watch the film. I've watched it again and again - probably 20 times. You said just after the screening that this is the first time you've watched the film on the big screen for fifteen years. While we're having mass, mad war, how do you feel about watching the film in today's world?

BK: I feel a tremendous sense of regret that, for example, the Pakistan that was created by Mohamad Ali Jinnahand, for the best reasons in the world, the India that was forged by the wonderful Pandit Nehru, both now possess nuclear weapons and are both now in a terrible cycle of reciprocated threats and violence towards one another. I was very aware of that and it's very sad. It saddened me. But I'm delighted at your response and that it's brought hope to you and for you to say that is a great gift to Dick and to myself and I thank you for that.

JR: Bearing in mind how long the film is, if you've watched it 20 times, that's probably about a third of your life. [laughter and applause]. Almost every waking hour, I imagine. Next time, make it shorter, will you?... Gentleman there...

Lazy Choice

Audience member: I auditioned for RADA and didn't get in. I think they showed the most appalling judgement. You didn't go to university or to drama school, do you think you missed out at all?

BK: Well, who knows? Who knows? It's possible. I was very lazy in the sixth form at school, I wasn't motivated properly, I handled it very badly and I was not given a place at university to study medicine. I lazily wanted to follow my father's footsteps, it was a lazy choice. I didn't go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey. The random alchemy of my career was that it was in the stars that I was to audition for Trevor Nunn and he invited me into his Royal Shakespeare Company. Therefore, in the late sixties and early seventies, through Trevor, Peter Brook, Buzz Goodbody, through the great directors I worked with and the great roles I was privileged to play, that was my home, my education, my parent, my friend. That company was everything to me, and having had the great fortune to be with that company during those years, I therefore have no regrets, just in case my presence at drama school or at university would have lost me the opportunity to audition for Trevor and for him to, in such a committed way, take me - why me? - but take me under his wing and say 'this is the actor I would really like to look after.'

JR: What did he see in you? Did he tell you what he saw in you back then that he responded to?

BK: Yes, actually, he did. I remember one of my audition speeches was from Byron, another was Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs and another was from Hamlet. He said it was a daring, a recklessness and a danger, perhaps I was just terrified during the audition, but he saw some element of danger and recklessness there, not too concerned about the self, more concerned about the absurdities of the character.

JR: He had an eye, didn't he? He knew what he was looking for... Gentleman down the front there please...

Audience member: It's an epic landscape question. There are very few directors who have a genuine vision for wide-screen... cinerama vision if you like, but from your privileged point of view, can you define it? What is it? What's the secret?

JR: In terms of the making of the film, or the performing in that kind of scale?

Audience member: From your point of view. How do you see it? Do you see the finished product or are you aware that he's got this fantastic wide-screen vision, this epic-landscape vision.

BK: I think that the secret is, again it brings me back to balance and a kind of mathematics. I realised this, and it was a shocking realisation, it was quite terrifying: that when I was playing Hamlet, I realised there was no way round it, for the two-and-a-half hours of that play I had to be as intelligent as the most intelligent man in dramatic poetic literature. I had to hold together. My brain cells and my synapses and grey stuff had to be held together and galvanised and given voice to appear to be the most intelligent person, not on stage, but in the world at that particular time. Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence. And the director, who worked with me - she's dead now, I'm deeply sorry to say - but the director, Buzz Goodbody, who worked with me on Hamlet, had one of the fiercest intelligences and the most probing intellect and an extraordinary passion for life in a very extreme sense, one of the most developed intelligences I've ever met in a young person. So there was a parallel, a balance there. I think with those who are gifted to make epic cinema, the vision required, again, is that the equation between the director and the story and the leading protagonists has to be one of mathematical precision and balance and grace. It's not possible to put the epic sweep of history that held Gandhi's life on screen unless the director himself has those qualities in him or her. In Richard there were those qualities of leadership, of grace, of generosity, of intelligence, of wisdom, of wit, of perspective. All these qualities that are required - and there's no way round this, that are required - to make the film a genuine narrative event, a great story, they all have to be in the leading players - and in cinema the leading player is the director - all the qualities have to be coiled up like serpents inside the director and they have to be given life and vision, but those qualities have to be in that individual, you cannot conjure them up on the set, they have to be there from the word 'go.' I think the secret is a largeness of vision and a largeness of intelligence and a largeness of soul. 'Mahatma' means 'great soul' and that's what Lord Attenborough is, and that's why the film is so extraordinary.

JR: Let's have another question... the young woman there...

Audience member: What did you have to do for the screen tests for Gandhi and how did you react when you found out you had the part?

BK: I was working with George Frost, I think it was George Frost, the make-up man, who made me up as the young lawyer first, and I did a screen test as the young lawyer with, I think one of the young ladies who might have played my wife, and Dickie said that he liked the test very much and that he would like to recall me to test for the older Gandhi, older by 50 years, I mean seriously older Gandhi, so I lost a little weight, and I cut my hair as short as possible and then George Frost put the bald cap on and the make-up on and it was a very strange experience because there was a moment when... because I didn't look in the mirror while George was making me up. It was George, wasn't it? It was George, yes. Of course Tom [Smith] made me up for the film, but George made me up for the screen tests I think and we tested, I looked in the mirror during the make-up and I realised that I was perilously close to being quite like him at the end of the session and a little door opened, dangerously opened inside me, where I really wanted to do it, and I felt that I might actually be a contender.

I never thought I'd get to that stage and then Dickie came into the dressing room and saw me in the make-up chair with the robe and the specs and the sandals and he just said 'Ben, I want you to do it,' and we gave each other a really big hug. I said 'I won't let you down.' He said 'I know you won't,' and then he chuckled and said 'and now you'd better go and do the test.' [laughter] So it was a great gift - talk about directors and their gifts, that was a great gift to me because I had the confidence of knowing that I'd been given the role and then I went on to test with Roshan Seth, who was testing for Nehru, but it was as dignified and as untraumatic and as beautiful as that and he did not allow me to do that second test - he told me before the test.

JR: Just think how different the film would have been if the backers had had their way and it had been John Belushi... [laughter]

Audience member: I just want to prevail on the point about the gift once again. You said, a while ago, that sometimes a director gives a gift to an actor by giving him or her a role, and I think the actor, by playing it the way that they have played it, have shared the gift with the entire film-going audience, and it's a legacy that will remain to cinema and for us who go to watch it. And we clapped for you, we all stood up, and my hands were stinging for a very few seconds after when you started speaking. But I have to say I too have seen this film many times, my friends, not 20 times, but there you are. The greatest gift, or the greatest feeling of 'thank you' that I can say to the both of you, is the silent tears that well up in my eyes and crawl down my cheeks every time I see this film and my voice is still emotional. It's a fantastic piece of work. Thank you both very, very much.

BK: Thank you.

JR: Can we just settle this: who's seen it the most? [laughter]...gentleman there with his hand up... blue shirt.

Audience member: Talking about the challenges faced with going back to do another film about the camps after Simon Wiesenthal, how do you deal with going home at the end of a working day, knowing that you'll have to go back and do it again tomorrow, and again the day after that?

BK: Well in that particular case there were times when I wished that could go home, but unfortunately I went to a hotel in Krakow, and unfortunately, one night, there was a brawl in the bar because a horrible anti-Semitic remark was made to one of my fellow Israeli actors, one of my fellow actors who was an Israeli, sorry, and we were all extremely upset. I reacted rather violently, I'm afraid. What I'm trying to say is there was actually no way home at the end of those days. I felt more at home on the set with Steven than I was in that lonely hotel room. I felt safe coming onto the set because I then knew that at least we could do something with the demons that were in our heads. I had nightmares most nights. It was only when I got onto the set that I felt safe under Steven's guidance and active and positive in the fact that we were making the film and therefore perhaps doing some service to all those who'd lost their lives so horribly by telling their story, but the evenings were unmanageable. But the sets, strangely enough, were more manageable because as storytellers we had the control. It was extremely grim. Extremely grim.

Audience member: Following on from that question and... playing Gandhi would presumably be the other side of that. Do you go back to your hotel room at night playing Gandhi and feel some kind of unworthiness at living up to somebody like that? How do you deal with that?

BK: Well, you have to stop victimising yourself. If you start to victimise yourself, as an unworthy component in a beautifully constructed machine, that component is going to fail the machinery. Now, I had feelings of unworthiness before I walked onto the set, and I have feelings of pride and wonder and astonishment and disbelief when I see what we managed to achieve on the screen, which was way beyond my wildest dreams, but at the moment of working on the set you have to constantly reduce yourself to zero, focus on the moments between 'Action' and 'Cut,' do your absolute best to stay in the present, and not beat yourself up and victimise yourself, because actually that is unfair, not to the self, but to the rest of the team and the crew. It's no good arriving on the set, whinging about not feeling up to it. It's part of the job, whilst you're there and whilst you're employed, to find the necessary energy and commitment to meet the energy and commitment of the director. Moments of self-doubt are not indulged in while you're working. You just have to sleep, learn your lines and get back on the set and do your job.

JR: How do you cope with directors who you don't think, perhaps, are up to the task themselves, if you've ever encountered that, how is that for you when you're working on a film and maybe someone doesn't seem to have it as under control as you might like, or have the vision that you thought they did?

BK: 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, and you have to have the courage to say to the director if you meet them, if it gets that far, which perhaps it shouldn't, because you shouldn't have to be, in a sense, seemingly discourteous, but sometimes you do have to say, face-to-face or through your agents, 'I don't think it's going to work.' You can make excuses through your agent, but if the director's sitting there across the table, it's quite hard to make excuses, and I have actually said to a director recently, 'you know, I don't think this is going to work,' and we didn't take it any further, because I sensed that the chemistry wasn't there. I suppose an actor is largely made up of empathy, one has to be empathetic in order to act, and perhaps those antennae are out when meeting directors and when reading the script. When the empathy and the chemistry is completely out of whack, the days are interminably long and very, very difficult and you know in your heart that the film isn't going to work because the violin section, the cello section, the brass section, the percussion section are all playing different symphonies and it's a total mess and you throw it all at the editor and the poor editor has to try and make something of it but you know in your bones that it's not going to work because the rhythm... filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn't there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can't. You know, you know in your heart. So try and make choices before you get on the set is the best thing.

JR: We probably have time for just a couple more... let me take this fellow here...

Audience member: The first time I watched Gandhi, it left me feeling profoundly sad and powerless. Did playing Gandhi not fill you with a sense of futility for the hope of mankind? And if so, how did you overcome this?

BK: Being a leading man on a film set, under the direction of somebody like Dickie Attenborough is very empowering and you have to be extremely careful how you use that power. It is such an extraordinary state of grace. It's thrilling. And all the things you very intelligently and generously allude to as traps or dangers never, never occurred to me at all. It was a beautiful ensemble company to be with. One was immensely surrounded by love and support, my story of Roshan bears that out. Every day with Dickie bore that out too. The actual act of creation, of making a film, of being there on time, of learning your lines, of working between 'Action' and 'Cut,' of being faithful to the character, the script, the historical... there is so much to do, I promise you, that you don't have time to think about anything else. You really, really don't. 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. You literally, if you're climbing a mountain, my eyes are on the rock face in front of me. I do not look up, I do not look down, for all, I hope, the right reasons. It's the rock face in front of me. I have to grip that and move that way.

Audience member: What about the aftermath of playing Gandhi?

BK: The aftermath was glorious. It was beautifully edited, the musical score was put on it, and then we had this great world tour to promote the film and then we had eight Academy Awards, so we were completely vindicated and it was always a joy to be associated with, and be such a central part of this wonderful project.

JR: I've just noticed the time and we've already gone way over our allotted space, I'm afraid, so maybe we should take one more, if that's okay with you?

BK: Yes, yes, you're wonderful to stay this late.

Audience member: The lady here's been waiting for ages...

JR: I'm sorry, so have lots of other people with their hand up, but you have put your case so forcefully there [laughter]... you have bullied us... it better be good... [laughter]

Audience member: Is there anyone, living or dead, that you would love to play, that you haven't played?

BK: You know, Jonathan loved Sexy Beast and was surprised by the performance and I think one of the reasons why the performance might be surprising is that the role completely surprised me. There was no strategy, there was no choice, I didn't think 'hmm... I think I'd like to play a gangster with tattoos on his arms from South London next time...' I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I'm waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me. To be ambushed by these chances is more thrilling than perhaps being somewhat blinkered and say 'I would love to play x, y or z,' because then my peripheral vision closes and all these wonderful lateral sideways ambushes... I'm blocking them off, and I think life's too exciting for that and too short.

JR: It was a nice question, thank you. I'm sure you'd like to join me in thanking, obviously, Sir [sic] Richard Attenborough for being here this evening and for... not just Gandhi, but so many fabulous films and also, especially, Sir Ben Kingsley, also for his work in the movie but for giving us so much of himself this evening.

BK: And thank you for staying, thank you so much for staying...

[applause]