LOS ANGELES, California?Imagine Sir Ben Kingsley as a Beatle. It was one of those might-have-beens for the knighted actor.
?I was offered a contract by Dick James who recorded all the Beatles? early discs,? the Oscar-winning thespian said in a recent interview. ?It was an extraordinary meeting. Dick was quite insistent because he heard me play the guitar and sing onstage in London, as did the boys, John (Lennon) and Ringo (Starr). It was quite difficult for me to decide which way to go. In the same week, I was offered a line of rather small but wonderful roles in classical theater. I decided to follow the classical theater route.?
Music?s loss was the acting world?s gain. Today, Sir Ben is considered one of the world?s finest actors. He stars in ?The Wackness,? one of the favorites in the Sundance Film Festival early this year, which won the audience award for narrative feature last Sunday in the Los Angeles Film Festival. He plays Dr. Squires, a marijuana-smoking shrink ? a middle-aged man who probably began the habit as he grew up in the Beatles-influenced, psychedelic 1960s.
Graying psychiatrist
A troubled teenage drug dealer, portrayed by Josh Peck, trades pot for therapy sessions with the psychiatrist who is intent on living life to the fullest. The two form an unlikely friendship but complications begin when the kid falls for the doctor?s daughter (Olivia Thirlby of ?Juno?). In one scene, Sir Ben makes out with one of the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate.
?I have to assure you that no drugs were harmed during the making of this film,? Sir Ben quipped. Picture the knighted actor, famous for playing Gandhi, as a graying psychiatrist, sporting long hair and smoking from a bong. His look in the film is quite a contrast to his shaved head these days.
Of the weed he lights up in the movie, the actor said in his impeccable British accent: ?There?s a kind of automatic response in the body when you find that you?re doing something very taboo. So even though the substance was herbal tobacco, I got the most unstoppable fit of giggles. I felt as though I was somehow deliciously cheating the world every time I lit a bong or took a drag of that herbal tobacco.
Novelty in naïveté
Sir Ben explained, ?Because I?ve never handled any of that stuff before, the prop men showed me how to use it but I also rather liked the way that I stayed somewhat naïve in my handling of it. I wanted to look as though my character has never done it before. Some people can do something on a daily basis but when you watch them, it looks as though they?ve never done it before. There?s a naïveté to it. So the novelty was quite fun.?
He said the long hair was his idea. ?It was my decision,? he said. ?The rather unruly long hair is my character?s strange gesture toward adolescent rebelliousness. He hasn?t quite grown up. The wig was made by a lady in Vancouver. We worked very carefully on the wig. I was happy with the resulting portrait of Dr. Squires that I created.?
In Mike Myers? comedy, ?The Love Guru,? Ben, who was born Krishna Bhanji in England to an English model-actress and a Muslim Indian doctor, has a short role as a cross-eyed spiritual leader named?get this, Tugginmypuddha. ?The film satirizes the Western world?s uncontrollable appetite to anything called guru,? he explained. ?We have property guru, weight guru, money guru, love guru, cooking guru, poker guru and so on. It?s an odd appropriation of an ancient word. The film does look at the crazy obsession with gurus that started I suppose in the 1960s with the Maharishi and the Beatles, and evolving for many years into what we have today. It?s a very gentle satire. At the heart of the western appetite for the guru is a desire for self-realization.?
Of being knighted in 2001, Ben mused, ?When we try and describe the British-ness or English-ness of things, it?s very hard for us to do so unless we do it through illustration or example. Let me try to do this because the whole phenomenon of knighthood is a very strangely English thing. On the one hand, in British society, you have a total indifference to success. There?s an almost contempt for success. Destroying or lampooning successful personalities and politicians, satirizing them very cruelly, putting them down is very much a part of the traditional English approach to what we might loosely call fame or success. They don?t like it.?
Extraordinary gesture
He added, ?But in America, in a restaurant in Los Angeles, for example, five or six people will leave their table, come over to our table and very sweetly say, ?I love your work,? go back and sit down. I think that?s so charming.
?In England, this is what happens when you walk into a restaurant (he mimicked people repeatedly looking at him with disdain). But on the other end of the scale is when you think that the English ignore you to the point of really being quite disdainful, the government and the Queen have a way of saying, ?We rather like you.? There is seeming indifference to success and yet there is this extraordinary gesture, this beautifully institutionalized acknowledgement of success from the same culture. Every culture has its own balance.?
Since the 64-year-old actor is married to a Brazilian, Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro, he was asked if he is learning Portuguese. ?You answer this, darling,? Ben said with a smile toward someone in the back. Everyone turned around to see ?Dani,? a sultry-looking woman, in a skintight dress, who is 31 years his junior and is his wife No. 4. She simply smiled.
?My Portuguese is nonexistent,? Ben said, his eyes still gleaming. ?My wife is the daughter of a retired English professor in Brazil.? To laughter, he said, ?So Dani?s family speaks better English than I do.?
Happy and fulfilled
A question inquiring if he is happy and fulfilled these days prompted Sir Ben to share an illuminating anecdote: ?Let me approach that question slightly sideways, if you don?t mind. Because I find it very difficult to answer when it is about my personal life. I remember a great theater director, Peter Brook, who said something to all of us when we were gathered together rehearsing ?A Midsummer Night?s Dream? at the Ahmanson Theater (in LA) in the 1970s. We were then a very young cast.
?Peter told us that it?s really impossible for an actor to do his work if he is unhappy,? he continued. ?He offered us the hypothesis that sometimes unhappiness drives us forward creatively but even though you?re driven, and you may be energized by an escape from unhappiness, you actually may not be doing your best work.
?I have to agree with Peter that if I am not happy inside, I?d be limping through my role in, for example, my next film ?Elegy? (with Penelope Cruz), which is an extraordinary examination of a unique love story. It examines love, life and death in the most beautiful way. I?d be guessing at the great issues that the film examines. But since I?ve been married to Dani and in love with Dani, a certain huge part of my guess work is over.?
E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, "The Nepales Report," on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.
