The Last Legion - Sir Ben Kingsley interview
Compiled by Jack Foley
AFTER years of acclaimed work in the theatre, Sir Ben Kingsley became an ‘overnight’ star with his lauded performance in the lead role of Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.
In the 25 years since he has showed a tremendous range, winning acclaim for his work in films such as Bugsy, Schindler’s List, Sexy Beast, Death & The Maiden and House Of Sand & Fog.
In The Last Legion he plays Ambrosinus, teacher and loyal defender of Rome’s boy Emperor Romulus (Thomas Sangster) who must take flight when the once mighty Empire begins to crumble. He talks about the film…
As Ambrosinus you prove yourself pretty handy in a fight, don’t you?
Sir Ben Kingsley: It’s called Irish stick fighting. I had to practice that and horse riding, I had riding lessons a few miles from where I live. And when I got to our locations in Tunisia and later Slovakia we carried on with the horse riding lessons and the martial arts as well.
Were these new challenges for you?
Sir Ben Kingsley: Horse riding was, a bit. That was good because I’m a bit wary of horses, but I really enjoyed riding mine. I thought that was a beautiful image in the film as well, Ambrosinus at the front and the kid holding on to me sat on the same horse. That’s one of the central images. And the fighting’s good because I think it conveys to the younger members of the audience that if anyone comes near this kid I’m really going to smack them hard. I think children need that idea of an adult absolutely defending a child, which is good. It was lovely to have both those sides to this character.
Was it easy for you to get into the mindset of a warrior?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I once had an opportunity to have dinner next to General Sir Michael Jackson, and I had the temerity to say to him: “You and I have one thing in common.” He asked what, and I said: “Nobody knows what you and I do for a living. They don’t know what the soldier does, they don’t know what the actor does, they’re two areas of great mystery, for very different reasons.” He laughed and said I was absolutely right. The soldier’s very misconceived, I think. There have been beautiful attempts to portray him, but I’d love to be in that silhouette myself and portray that moment of when you decide to do something – the how and the why – under enormous pressure, under fire.
There are some very resonant lines in The Last Legion for the times we live in, such as defending Britannia from tyranny. Did you see those there yourself?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I think cinema is getting more and more potent, it’s an extraordinary invention. I was with Dickie Attenborough recently when he was screening Oh What A Lovely War! at the Toronto Film Festival. He did a Q&A after the film. He said himself that cinema is a very powerful weapon, that you can wrap up very profound messages in comedy, in drama, in romances. If there is a central message there that would be the heart of the film. I think the heart of our film would be “don’t touch this child” – that has its own beauty for me, and its own strength.
How did you settle upon the accent Ambrosinus uses?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I chatted to [producer] Dino De Laurentiis and his daughter Raffaella about the Celtic look, that Shamanistic look. We talked about the hair and the costume and I said I really wanted him to have a Celtic accent. They said it all sounded good to them. Funnily enough, the writing seemed to fit the accent like a glove, I didn’t change many words at all. I was interviewed by somebody from north Wales and she said it was pretty good, I didn’t realise that it was that specific. But Neil Kinnock’s voice inspired my efforts, I’m a great admirer of his and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him. I love the way he has that Lloyd Georgian, Celtic tone. There’s something beautiful about it.
The character you play is a narrator as well, isn’t he?
Sir Ben Kingsley: He’s the storyteller in the film. I wanted something very ancient, the old world that was at the heart of the story under these same hills and this same sky. I wanted that.
There’s a saying about never working with children or animals, and yet here you are working with both. How did you find Thomas Sangster?
Sir Ben Kingsley: He’s very inspiring, I feel that the beautiful thing about working with good child actors is that they have this uncluttered purity and connection to you, they have an uncluttered connection with their character, completely non-intellectual and intuitive, a grasp of something at the heart of the character. Everything is very fresh with him, it’s very focussed and touching. He has this wonderful stillness and this gaze, I’m sure he’ll pull children in the cinema into those eyes. It was wonderful working with him, I loved it.
You also star with Aishwarya Rai. Having played Gandhi yourself to great acclaim did you find her duly deferential toward you?
Sir Ben Kingsley: Only for about two minutes! She had a great affection for this material. We were very fortunate in having Aishwarya as a cast member because as an Indian film star she’s got Indian mythology built into her psyche. You can’t be part of the Indian film business and be disconnected from Indian mythology, you’re part of it. She brought that relish and automatic love of mythology to the film. It was effortless for her and that was very good for us, to see somebody who could be completely dwelling inside a myth with complete ease.
How do your locations of Slovakia and Tunisia compare in terms of film friendliness?
Sir Ben Kingsley: They were both very favourable to us. It was remarkable, there was one moment in Tunisia which, a long time ago, was called Carthage. It was a huge rival to Rome, and we were there, amongst the descendants of the Carthaginians. You could practically see Italy from where we were filming. There was a time on a hillside where there were Nonso Anozie, Aishwarya, Colin Firth, myself, Rupert Friend, Thomas, a little bonfire, a sword and some cicadas. We couldn’t see anybody else there and for a few seconds we didn’t quite know where we were in time. I said to Colin: “Do you know where you are?” And he said: “It’s not present is it?” I said: “No, we’ve just slipped back, slipped back through a hole in time. It will close, we’ll be back.” But just for that moment all of us were way back in ancient Rome…
That was Tunisia, it very much embraced the film that working relationship, the environment to that landscape. And Slovakia looked like that part of Britain where Hadrian’s Wall is, with the mist coming through those trees, perfect. Both landscapes were perfect.