Sir Ben Kingsley can do pretty much anything as an actor. He possesses the gravitas to carry a leading role as well as a stand-out supporting part, and sometimes it’s difficult to determine which he’s doing at any given time. He’s not always in the best movies of the year, but I’ll be damned if he’s not usually the best thing in whatever he signs up for. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award four times, winning once in 1983 for GANDHI, a film I hold very near and dear to my heart for reasons I explain to him at the beginning of our recent interview for his new film LEARNING TO DRIVE.
Once again, Sir Ben plays another Indian character, but this time it’s a Sikh driving instructor named Darwan, who lives in New York after being exiled from his homeland, where he was a university professor. In his second job as a taxi driver, he meets high-class New York book critic Wendy (Patricia Clarkson), who has just split from her husband and is in desperate need of driving lessons. Clarkson and Kingsley worked together before in ELEGY (also directed by DRIVE helmer Isabel Coixet), and their strange chemistry and co-dependency is legitimately wonderful and authentic. (Both were also in Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND.)
Kingsley has worked with the best actors and directors the world has to offer, from Spielberg and Scorsese to Attenborough and Uwe Boll. He can terrify us, as he did in SEXY BEAST, and he can poke fun at his professional (see IRON MAN 3). He is the consummate working actor, who typically shoots 3-5 films per year, with the same amount in some state of pre-production for the following year. He’s an easy actor to love and admire, and it was a real honor to sit across from him in Chicago. Please enjoy my talk with Sir Ben Kingsley…
Capone: I wanted to begin by saying that GANDHI is the reason I became a film critic, because when I was 15 I won a contest at the local multiplex to pick the Oscars—this would have been in1983—and everybody else was picking E.T. to win best film, and I picked GANDHI; and this contest required you to pick winners in every category. The prize was a pass for free movies for a year at any AMC theater, so all the AMC theaters around town.
Ben Kingsley: For a year? Wow!
Capone: I was a movie buff before that, but I literally saw everything, multiple times, and I got so addicted to it that I started writing reviews for my high school paper, and it just went from there. So, thank you.
BK: My goodness! [Claps] Thank you! And that was a lovely era of filmmaking; my fellow nominees were extraordinary: MISSING, Jack Lemmon; MY FAVORITE YEAR, Peter O’Toole; TOOTSIE, Dustin Hoffman; THE VERDICT, Paul Newman. I was up against those giants. But what a great time to be introduced into film like you were. It’s huge.
Capone: Indeed. With this film, I understand you were aware of the project through Patricia, but when you first read the script, was there something about Darwan that you said, “Ok, I know where this gentleman is coming from.” Was there something about him that you remember really latching onto?
BK: I do, yes. There is, in Darwan, an uncluttered decency that’s wonderful to come across—either in life or on the page. And to have him embodied in the framework of that culture, to be held by that discipline, that culture, that appearance, were wonderful added pointers to his portrait. I think of myself as a portrait artist now. To create a portrait based upon and embodying decency is an opportunity that can’t come very often, because usually they’re not dramatically very interesting.
Capone: Good guys?
BK: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Unless you have a good guy facing an extraordinary challenge, and his blessing, his challenge was exile. Terrible. His brother is shot, his family tortured, he is a Sikh, he will remain a Sikh, but he can’t go home. I find that very painful to imagine and dwell upon. And that choice by the writer is a very intelligent choice. How can he be such a good person with that kind of background? You would imagine that he would be murderously vengeful, disturbed, bitter. No. He’s open, loving, kind, disciplined, he is a warrior. They are warrior people and potentially a great patriarch, I think. It was a delightful, wonderful journey to explore that decency, as I say, in the face of some degree of adversity.
Capone: I wrote it in my notes when I was watching the film: even before we see him interact with Wendy, I knew he had some sort of code that the lived by. Part of it was on display in his work ethic, part of it was the way he treated other people, part of it was he avoided confrontation. Even the way he is around women, which at first think is him being respectful, and he is, but also we realize later that he has no idea how to act around women. When he finally meets his bride to be, he’s so awkward that he seeks advice. It’s wonderful.
BK: Well, it’s lovely you should say that. I think I must be grateful to Isabel, our director, for filming those lovely incidences that so easily could be cut out of the film in anyone else’s hands. But as you say, they do form a portrait of this guy, and by the time he gets into Wendy’s life, you know who he is. And then also to have Wendy, who is so distraught by her loss that it turns into bitterness—it really does—against the whole male sex, that she will never trust again. Hates them. And then at the end of the film, she says to this man, “You’re a good man. You’re my faith.” Completely opposite woman. Complete turnaround from the beginning of the film. And you think, “How on earth are you ever going to fix that stance against manhood? Send her a warrior. Send her this decent man. Send her somebody pure. So the choice of a Sikh is, I think, a beautiful choice.
Capone: It’s interesting that she says that about him being her faith, because this is a New York story, and the only times where there is real quiet in the film are in the temple and in the car. Those are their churches in a sense.
BK: Absolutely, they are. He also teaches her to observe the world around her too and allow it to teach. At home, he was a university professor, as was his dad. To teach is in his DNA. It’s a wonderful thing about him that he can’t stop teaching. He can’t, and yet as you rightly point out, he has a lot to learn. He calls his sister and asks advice from her, and then finally, the real advice comes from somebody completely outside his culture. And hopefully the real advice to Wendy comes from somebody completely outside her culture too. And that’s the interesting thing.
Capone: These characters are from two very different cultures, but this isn’t about him inviting her into his culture or her inviting him. They have to be separate for this to work. They have to live in their own worlds and then come together every so often for this to work.
BK: Totally agree. And then that influenced very much how Patricia and I worked together, because between takes while a lens was being changed or a vehicle was being swapped or or a camera angle was being changed or a light, we have a considerable amount of time between takes and setups, and Patricia and I didn’t speak. We stayed in the very bubbles you’re describing. It really enhanced our performances. We didn’t invite each other into our worlds, because it would have blurred the wonderful climax at the end where those barriers, for a few seconds, completely dissolve. And still he learns from that. The gesture he wants to make to Wendy, he goes home and makes to his wife.
Capone: I’ve heard you say that when you’re done with a role, you try to start to shed it immediately. But are there some that cling a little longer than others, and was this one of them?
BK: I think that he will be one of them. He will remain a voice inside me. Don Logan from SEXY BEAST is another. He stayed with me.
Capone: Hey stayed with me, are you kidding? In addition to Patricia and Isabel, you also get to work with the great Sarita Choudhury, who plays your arranged-marriage wife and is a phenomenal actress. I’ve loved her since MISSISSIPPI MASALA, her first movie. And she was in “Homeland.” I don't think I’ve ever seen her play someone so…
BK: …naive?
Capone: Naive, but just so completely introverted. She’s almost comatose in this new world. She’s a very different woman than the one he’s teaching to drive in terms of their communicative skills.
BK: And also, I have to learn from Wendy—I literally ask her—how to talk to my wife. It’s a beautiful question coming from someone so contained and outwardly so confident and so knowing that he finally says “I don’t know.”
Capone: That’s a big moment in his life.
BK: Huge. From that rather patriarchal society, to turn to a liberated New York woman and to say “Help” is wonderful.
Capone: A teacher may be most stubborn person from whom to ask advice.
BK: Absolutely. And then fate comes to the rescue of Sarita in the form of the chance meeting in the supermarket, and then the girls coming into the house.
Capone: They may have unleashed a monster in the process. [both laugh] One off-topic question, if I may. I remember the divisiveness when IRON MAN 3 came out, and the divisiveness of people concerning your character. Many comic book fans just said, “This isn’t right.” But I love trevor.
BK: Trevor, yes! What a survivor.
Capone: He is the complete opposite of you, though. He’s this guy who never hit it big as an actor, and he talks up all these tiny rolls that he’s had. But that had to so much fun to play because you recognize those actorly qualities about him.
BK: Oh, totally!
Capone:It looked like it was a blast to play.
BK: Particularly with Robert Downey, Jr. Scenes with him were absolutely beautiful. Nearly all my scenes were with him. A joy to play, a joy to stay inside that crazy, drug-ridden bubble of Trevor’s. The inflated confidence and grandeur. And then the role of a lifetime comes his way. He can sustain it; he can live this fantasy. Then of course, the bubble bursts.
Capone: Then he becomes really interesting.
BK: Yeah, really interesting.
Capone: And then you came back and did it again [for a Mavel One-Shot short], which made me think, “Wow, he must have really liked that character.”
BK: Yeah, we did the short. Oh yeah. So did the writer too. It was great to talk to Kevin Feige again. They were just completely on course with it, didn’t give anything away, didn’t edit it out, didn’t compromise it. It was lovely.
Capone: Disney just had their big pow-wow in California a couple of weeks ago, and John Favreau came out to talk about JUNGLE BOOK, and you were there.
BK: I was there! Oh yeah, the little boy talking to animals.
Capone: The animals are meant to look photo-real, correct?
BK: Totally.
Capone: A panther, that’s such a perfect animal for you. When you’re doing animation voice work, do you still act it out? Is it a physical experience for you?
BK: No, I try to keep it as vocal as possible, because I know if I start to move my body around too much, it will dilute my voice. It has to be through the voice. So when I did BOXTROLLS, for example, I recorded it all lying down. I didn’t move. I refused to move. And it was all through the voice. Then, they add the body, the other guys, thousands of miles away in a laboratory somewhere, they build the body. Same with the panther.
Capone: Then you’re also in Anton Corbijn’s new film LIFE, where you play Jack Warner.
BK: I do! It’s a cameo. But my relationship is with James Dean [played by Dane DeHaan] and how he let down the studio by not appearing at his premiere. I’m like a really tough coach to him. It’s a great scene. Anton’s a wonderful director.
Capone: Well, thank you so much. It was really wonderful to meet you.
