QuoteProject
The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!
Ben Kingsley
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity and preparation in acting.

Ben Kingsley highlights that while the camera captures performance, it truly reveals genuine behavior. Actors must fully understand their lines and characters to authentically portray them, suggesting that hard work and a deep connection to the material are essential for effective storytelling in film.

Themes

ActingPreparationAuthenticityPerformanceFilm

In practice

Example use cases

In a drama workshop, a director might use this quote to inspire actors to immerse themselves in their roles.

More from Ben Kingsley

In cinema, the leading player is the director.
Ben KingsleyRead
Somewhere in your career, your work changes. It becomes less anal, less careful and more spontaneous, more to do with the information that your soul carries.
Ben KingsleyRead
When I choose a role it's either because I recognise the man, or that I'm very curious to know him. If I neither recognise nor know him, then it is better that I don't play him.
Ben KingsleyRead
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 KingsleyRead
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 KingsleyRead
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 KingsleyRead

Similar quotes

Great art is indefinable but that's all right; it exists anyway.
Edward AbbeyRead
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead
Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.
Martin ScorseseRead
I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
Gustave FlaubertRead
We have no longer an outside and an inside as two separate things. Now the outside may come inside and the inside may and does go outside. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design and execution if the nature of materials and method and purpose are all in unison.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Ben Kingsley | QuoteProject