Sir Ben: How are you? VF: Doing very well, and you? Sir Ben: Riding back through the rain from a Martin Scorsese set. VF: For which movie? Sir Ben: Well the novel’s called Shutter Island, and our working title is Ash Cliff. VF: Who do you play in that? Sir Ben: I play a psychiatrist. I seem to be having a run on psychiatrists. It’s very different from my chap in Wackness. This guy’s pretty serious. He runs a very complex, top security institution in the 1950s for the criminally insane. VF: So no flower shirts? Sir Ben: Afraid not. Tweed suits.Careful, Tweedy. See the controversial Vanity Fair nude of Ben right here! :shock:
When we spoke, the actor—with memorable roles in Gandhi, Schindler’s List, and Sexy Beast—was in Boston filming for Martin Scorsese. “I love working for him,” said Kingsley. “He’s always showing us black-and-white films from the ’30s and ’40s. Unfortunately, it’s a lovely day today, very sunny, and Marty wants rain for a scene. The English side of me loves rain, but the Indian side is in love with ultraviolet rays.”
Kingsley the artisan was happy to name some of the many actors who inspire him. He called Anthony Hopkins "a Celtic wizard," Téa Leoni (whom he worked with on 2007's "You Kill Me") "the Katharine Hepburn of her generation" and said "Shutter Island" star Leonardo DiCaprio is "the perfect balance of discipline and recklessness." "Controlled acting is very boring," he said. "But that letting go, even if the audience don't know that's what they're seeing, actually they do love it. Because it's awakened something in them that's reckless. And limitless. And that's why we go to cinema."