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 KingsleyRead
One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Drama has the power to change our understanding of everyday concepts.
Ben Kingsley highlights the transformative potential of drama, suggesting that it can reshape how we perceive and define fundamental human emotions and concepts like love, home, and loyalty. By presenting these themes through dramatic storytelling, audiences can find new meanings and insights, reminding us that even tragedy can serve a greater purpose in broadening our emotional vocabulary and understanding.
Themes
DramaTransformationEmotionArtUnderstandingTragedy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of theater on community values, this quote can illustrate how drama shapes our perceptions.
More from Ben Kingsley
All quotes βIn 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
Similar quotes
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Gore VidalRead
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.
Kehinde WileyRead
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
Dani ShapiroRead
I don't think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.
Martha GrahamRead
When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused
Cicely TysonRead
What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.
Miles DavisRead