Films/Programs
A Tribute to Sir Ben Kingsley
Seemingly emerging out of the blue with a brilliant, Academy Award-winning performance in the title role of Richard Attenborough’s classic bio-epic Gandhi, Ben Kingsley had actually been honing his acting skills for almost two decades when the film became the cinematic phenomenon of 1982. Kingsley began his career with a small role on the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street in 1966. He was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and made his film debut in Fear is the Key in 1972. His versatile good looks, talent, and Indian and Russian/Jewish heritage made him a casting agent’s dream from the start, earning him a career to be envied, portraying a variety of characters on stage and television. His turn as the Mahatma in Attenborough’s Gandhi, caused audiences and critics worldwide to stand up and take notice of this supremely talented Brit, and earned him a slew of major awards in the process, including an Oscar, a BAFTA Award, and the Golden Globe for Best Actor.
He followed that triumph with a brilliant performance as an altogether different character—the cuckolded, contemporary husband in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, firmly establishing himself as an actor with a range as vast as his talent. Since that time, he has brought to life an assortment of richly nuanced, wildly varied characters as disparate as an Arab prince, a mad scientist, a deposed Iranian colonel seeking a new life in the U.S., the well-known Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as well as cinematic portrayals of real-life luminaries Itzhak Stern, Dmitri Shostakovich and Simon Wiesenthal. In 2000, Kingsley was recognized in his native country by HM Queen Elizabeth II, who named him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and knighted him the next year as part of the 2001 New Year’s Honors. His talents continue to impress, and audiences can look forward to eight new features in the coming year featuring his outstanding performances, three of which—Transsiberian, The Wackness, and Elegy—are having their Seattle premieres at SIFF, as well as a screening of his Academy Award-nominated 2001 performance in Sexy Beast. From an audience perspective, we can always look to Sir Ben Kingsley to transport and inspire us, to provide the moral core of a film, or—when he plays an unconventional antagonist—to provoke and transfix us, sometimes to astonishingly scary effect.
Whichever guise Sir Ben Kingsley’s characters take on in his multi-faceted, hugely accomplished body of work, you can count on a performance of such understated force and emotional truth that few actors can equal him on the basis of sheer, unbridled talent. We are honored to have the opportunity to salute him with this richly deserved tribute.
 | A Tribute to Sir Ben Kingsley
Sunday, May 25, 2:00 PM
Egyptian Theatre
Presentation of the 2008 Golden Space Needle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting, film clips from his career and the North American premiere of Isabel Coixet's Elegy followed by an in-depth interview and Q&A session with the audience.
Join us for an intimate 50-person dinner with Sir Ben Kingsley at Volterra Drawing Room in Ballard following the Tribute event at the Egyptian. Dinner tickets also include access to the Tribute event, reserved seating at the screening, post-film conversation and the Q&A.
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USA, 2007, 108 min.
An aging college professor, David Kepesh, finds his life as a lothario thrown into disarray after he starts an affair with an attractive student and finds himself being taught a lesson in jealousy. Based on Philip Roth’s short novel, The Dying Animal.
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United Kingdom, 2000, 89 min.
Ben Kingsley delivers one of his best performances ever in this high-voltage film that crackles with style and wit. When sociopathic gangster Don Logan (Kingsley) tries to recruit an ex-partner in crime (Ray Winstone) for a high-stakes heist back to London tension hits a fever-pitch as this battle
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