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SIR BEN KINGSLEY Talks THE BOXTROLLS
In celebration of the newly released film THE BOXTROLLS, Sir Ben Kingsley sat down with a small group of press to talk about his voice over work, and his new project LEARNING TO DRIVE. Check it out below!
A family event movie from the creators of “Coraline” and “ParaNorman” that introduces audiences to a new breed of family – The Boxtrolls, a community of quirky, mischievous creatures who have lovingly raised an orphaned human boy named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) in the amazing cavernous home they’ve built beneath the streets of Cheesebridge. When the town’s villain, Archibald Snatcher (Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley), comes up with a plot to get rid of the Boxtrolls, Eggs decides to venture above ground, “into the light,” where he meets and teams up with fabulously feisty Winnie (Elle Fanning). Together, they devise a daring plan to save Eggs’ family.
You haven’t done much voice work before, was that what attracted you to the role? And was it fun playing that kind of character?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : I haven’t done much of this before and I was sent the most beautiful script which rang true. The honest starting point for a family film I think is a very bold, very mature move — orphans. And they go through a struggle. They fight some very dark forces and they achieve their own light, and their own friendship and their own future. To present this as a family film is very refreshing, because I’m sorry to say that I think family films often wipe off the top two generations of the family and say anyone taller than this table won’t like this movie. It’s stupid, because that’s not a family film. But this is and it will have resonance for all the members of the family that see it. I say it’s rooted in truth because I can tell a good script from a bad. My training in my former years… I had no training, sorry. My former years as an actor were with tremendously good writers, one in particular, and therefore the way that this rang true, the way the patterns of human behavior in terms of loneliness, of longing, of care, of nurturing, of loss, of greed, of power, of indifference, they’re all there on the canvas. They’re all beautifully etched. So it was not a great leap for me to say, “Absolutely, yes,” to the script. Then I saw the drawing of the chap and saw that he was very different from me and therefore my voice would have to come from a different place. I’d have to find a voice that resonated from a very different place and would include all those frailties, those inadequacies, those longings, those addictions, delusions, narcissism, vanity. The guy’s a mess, held together by an absolute determination to be admitted into a club that does not want him. Because it’s so perfectly written, any actor would recognize, “Well, that’s the worst thing to do to that guy.” The worst thing you can do to that guy is to say, “You can’t come in,” because sooner or later, he’ll smash the door down. And he does. He demonizes a whole tribe of people who actually have nurtured and looked after an orphan beautifully, who are creative, inventive, loving, bonded. And they create their own civilization by what upper ground throws away. They never steal. They actually just use what is discarded and they make their world out of it. So given that the character was so beautifully presented to me as a portrait artist, my portrayal involved finding a voice that was completely relaxed, not my own. So I invited the recording studio to build a kind of airplane seat. It took five minutes. They had everything in the studio. It took them five minutes. They had everything there — the reclining chair, something to put my feet on. They were great. Moved the microphone, moved the script panel, and I did the whole thing reclining, lying down. It also helped me not to make physical gestures. When we speak, we tend to augment our language with our mannerisms. If I did that, it would perhaps lessen, shrink, what I was giving the animators. If I had to push something with my physical gesture, it means my voice isn’t doing enough. So I was completely still, which I found very, very freeing, as you say. I didn’t impose many limits on myself other than of course the character’s journey and his narrative function in the piece. Tony was mostly in the studio with me in England, not in America, and he helped me a great deal by letting me know that certain vocal mannerisms that I acquired as the character were great gifts to the animator. He said, “The animators will love that. When you do that, they can do all sorts of extraordinary things with it.” So I played with elongating my vowel sounds. I played with putting the letter ‘H’ where it shouldn’t be in a word to try and sound posh. All those little mannerisms, he encouraged me to really make them part of my bit of the portrait. Then the rest of my portrait, which is unprecedented for me, is to say, “And the other department do my body language.” I’ve never done that before. It’s always been me that I delegated the whole lot, because I had to, to the animators, to the guys who work with these people.
Knowing that, once you saw it, what was your impression and what struck you?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : They put something together, a speech that Snatcher gives to his goons, to his stooges, about ambition, how in some people, some creatures are of limited ambition and will be locked in their own small ambitions and world and others are capable of great ambition. And it’s actually politically a horrible speech when you examine it. It’s pretty nasty. I enjoyed very free reign, lying down in the studio, letting this voice come out, and I saw this clip. He’s walking down a flight of stairs and they accompanied one of my words with an amazingly narcissistic gesture of brushing back these awful threads of hair that he has hanging down. And I thought, “I have nothing to worry about. Absolutely everything I’m trying to do is there in that puppet.” Extraordinary exercise really.
I found it interesting that the adults had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and that can be the viewpoint of someone who’s five, six, or seven
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : Whether it’s the viewpoint or not, the fact is that if you’re going to offer a story, narrative to the audience about orphans struggling, you have to have a tidal wave against which they have to struggle. It can be indifference. It can be abandonment. It can be incarceration. It can be domineering cruelty. But in the narrative our heroine and hero have to struggle through the darker side of life and I congratulate LAIKA on having the courage to say, “Look boys and girls, it’s not a bowl of cherries.” That is really courageous because I don’t think anything is learned by feel good movies.
Looking at your vast body of work, speaking to the comedic elements of the character.
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : Absurd, really.
(con’t): Do you see elements of Richard III?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : Absolutely. The wonderful thing about Richard III is in his first soliloquy is in front of the audience and he explains exactly how he’s feeling and how he’s going to behave. He tells them, “Look, I’m mangled and wounded and I’m going to get the crown.” And Snatcher is in a sense, he can’t take rejection. There’s a reason for that, I don’t know the reason. But there’s a reason that he has an utter inability to be rejected. It turns him into a maniac. I saw a splendid version of Richard III ages of ago, and I could see what he was doing, but I could see why. I wasn’t allowed to join into why and really the why in Richard is it hurts to be me. I think there is something about the villains that I’m able to play that isn’t villainous. They’re vulnerable and wounded. I use that with Archibald Snatcher. Richard III and Othello — because he begins the play I’ve just been passed over for promotion and the world will suffer. And it does. At the end of the third act, Othello is responsible for seven deaths.
There’s a theme of transformation and there’s a huge difference between the hero and the villain. The hero just wants to transform into someone who knows who he is and the villain wants to move up the ladder, even though it’s shown very clearly that …
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : He’s allergic to it…
(con’t): And it’s not like kids movies where he’s brought down by the destruction of a machine. He does himself in where he has the choice to turn away. He even seems to know what’s going to happen and he does ti anyway. That’s almost tragic. Did you find that tragic element to it?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : I totally embraced the tragic element of his demise. He’s arc is doomed because of the way he’s been constructed. The way he has arrived, the way the God’s have made him, fashioned him that way. There is, in the script and in my portrait and hopefully in bigger context of the movie, there is that thread of tragedy, absurdity, danger, redemption, reunification, all the threads. I definitely warmed to the wound that will eventually consume him. Cheese is a great metaphor for success or power and power will absolutely corrupt Snatcher. And he has the choice. He thinks by being empowered that he can conquer the addiction. It happens to other people. It won’t happen to me. Bang!
You’ve got a lot of interesting projects coming up, can you talk about some of the ones you’re most excited for people to know about?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : Where do I begin [laughs]. LEARNING TO DRIVE, I’m particularly fond of. ROBOT OVERLOARDS, I’m looking forward to that one. That’s going to the London Film Festival. But, LEARNING TO DRIVE coming to Toronto, I’m excited to see, not how it’s received, how it touches people and attracts them.
You come from different cultures. I’m fascinated by different culture. You have families and grandkids… do they all get together. What does it look like at your house over the holidays?
SIR BEN KINGSLEY : It’s very hard for an actor to answer that because an actor, my pattern of life is so random that there are no such things as Holidays with a capitol H because I could be anywhere in the world and my children appreciate this. And as long as we keep in touch by email and telephone, everything is fine. No one ever says, “But it’s family.” No one ever says that. For me, that’s nonsense. Family is family over the internet, over Skype over telephone. Love is love, you don’t actually have to go through a ritual to prove that you love somebody. They all know dad’s very busy and I’ve looked after them well. They’ve all got homes, thanks to good ole dad. They’re happy, safe and loved.
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THE BOXTROLLS is in theaters now
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