Cinequest Event: An Afternoon with Sir Ben Kingsley
There are few pleasures SFist enjoys more in life than listening to a well-spoken, preferably British, man tell a story. We had just such a pleasure on Saturday afternoon at Cinequest when they awarded Sir Ben Kingsley with their Maverick Spirit Award.
After viewing a sort of Oscar lifetime award nomination-esque series of clips from some of Sir Ben's more notable movies (i.e. Ghandi and House of Sand and Fog included, Rules of Engagement absent), the man himself came out and talked and told stories (with voices! We love voices!). It started out a bit "This is Your Life" as someone in the balcony was friends in school in England with his sister. They went back and forth for a bit, reminscing about the old home town until someone else in the audience shouted "We have your high school professor over here." Hee! And thank god.
Photo from quality journo pulication Hello! magazine.
Kingsley said that he found "Hamlet" to be his best role - one he played pretty early in his career with the Royal Shakespeare Company - but that "Colonel Behrani" in the House of Sand and Fog was the role he was most proud of. He also had some interesting things to say describing the difference between acting on stage versus on film. He said that theatre is about the integrity of the event and cinema is about the intgreity of the moment; that theatre is the actor at his most public but in movies the actor is at his most private. Not being an actor, SFist found that a very intriguing distinction. But then he also said that acting is "crushingly difficult" but we're wondering why Tara Reid didn't get that memo.
He described his working method, saying that he tries to enter into a "conspiracy with the director", where they both establish a common distillation of what the story is about. For the House of Sand and Fog, he said that they agreed it was "About a man who had lost his king, then his kingdom, then his prince.". About becoming the character, he says that after he's done his basic preparation - understanding the limits of the person and the story and lines - he starts to see the characters in his peripheral vision - on the street, or from memory of people from his childhood.
Potentially the best part of the event was when Kingsley was asked about his knighthood. Reports are that Sir Ben is very fond of it. When asked if he felt very honoured and why he said that he felt that the British don't do such a good job with saying "good job". He quipped that the British motto should be "Others Must Fail" and that knighthood is the ritualized embrassing of their otherwise unexpressed enthusiasm.
Cinequest continues this week in San Jose.