Gandhi (1982) - Cast & Crew, Ratings, Awards Cast & Crew Gandhi (1982) Biography | PG | 3 hours and 8 minutes | November 30, 1982 (USA) Be the first to review +3 Director: Richard Attenborough Writer: John Briley This acclaimed biographical drama presents major events in the life of Mohandas Gandhi (Ben Kingsley), the beloved Indian leader who stood against British rule over his country. Dedicated to the concept of nonviolent resistance, Gandhi is initially dismissed by English officials, including the influential Lord Irwin (John Gielgud), but eventually he and his cause become internationally renowned, and his gatherings of passive protest move India towards independence. See All Movies Did You Like The Movie? Advertisement More Movies With Ben Kingsley How famous is the cast of "Gandhi"? PrettyFamous Score The PrettyFamous score quantifies the fame of the film's cast members based on the number of awards the actors and actresses have ever been nominated for, combined box office gross of all the movies the actors and actresses have been in, and the current internet popularity of the cast.

Ranking Every Matthew McConaughey Movie From Worst to Best PrettyFamous tracked Matthew McConaughey's career by ranking his entire filmography (no matter what size his role) to date from worst to first. 7 minute read › 1982 Academy Awards® Winners and History The Verdict (1982) Actor: BEN KINGSLEY in "Gandhi", Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie", Jack Lemmon in "Missing", Paul Newman in "The Verdict", Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year" Actress: MERYL STREEP in "Sophie's Choice", Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria", Jessica Lange in "Frances", Sissy Spacek in "Missing", Debra Winger in "An Officer and a Gentleman" Supporting Actor: LOUIS GOSSETT, JR.

in "An Officer and a Gentleman", Charles Durning in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", John Lithgow in "The World According to Garp", James Mason in "The Verdict", Robert Preston in "Victor/Victoria" Supporting Actress: JESSICA LANGE in "Tootsie", Glenn Close in "The World According to Garp", Teri Garr in "Tootsie", Kim Stanley in "Frances", Lesley Ann Warren in "Victor/Victoria" Director: RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH for "Gandhi", Sidney Lumet for "The Verdict", Wolfgang Petersen for "Das Boot", Sydney Pollack for "Tootsie", Steven Spielberg for "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial" 1982 became known as the year with many cross-dressing, gender-reversed, transvestite performances and roles with confused sexual identities: Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Julie Andrews and Robert Preston in Victor/Victoria, and John Lithgow in The World According to Garp. It must be noted that these four acting nominees all lost their bids.

And it was known as the year that one of the most successful contenders, the box-office blockbuster E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial , lost the top Oscar award. Many of the major awards among 1982 films were swept by director Sir Richard Attenborough's earnest, conventional three-hour long, costume epic biography/story of the life of the great, noble and venerable Indian leader, the Mahatma Gandhi (with eleven nominations and eight wins). It won the largest number of awards for any British film up to that time - although the film was financed by Columbia Studios. (The year before, the British film Chariots of Fire was also honored with many accolades - seven nominations and four wins.) The film's eight awards were for Best Actor (Ben Kingsley in a debut lead performance), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art/Set Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design - and director Attenborough won two Oscars - for Best Picture (as producer), and Best Director. Two of the Best Picture nominees might have won instead, since they were also very-accomplished films: director Steven Spielberg's extremely-popular and entertaining, block-buster science-fiction film E.T.

- The Extra-Terrestrial (with nine nominations and four wins for technical achievements, for Best Sound, Original Score for John Williams - his fourth Oscar, Visual Effects, and Sound Effects Editing) Sydney Pollack's witty gender comedy Tootsie (with ten nominations and only one win, for Best Supporting Actress), the story of an out-of-work actor Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) whose female disguises help him get a job and become a female star on a daytime television soap opera. (Although the Academy awarded a Best Picture Oscar to Annie Hall (1977) five years earlier, a rare occurrence for a comedy, it was not likely to occur at such regular intervals.) The other two Best Picture contenders were: Greek director Constantin Costa-Gavras' first American film, the South American political thriller Missing (with four nominations and one win - Best Screenplay Adaptation) that suggested CIA involvement in the overthrow of Chile's dictator Salvador Allende Sidney Lumet's dramatic courtroom drama The Verdict (with five nominations and no wins), about an alcoholic Boston lawyer named Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) and with a screenplay by David Mamet The only Best Picture-nominated director who wasn't nominated for Best Director was Costa-Gavras.

Instead, German director Wolfgang Petersen was nominated for Das Boot (The Boat) (with six nominations and no wins), a tense and claustrophobic tale of a 1941 Nazi U-boat during World War II. [The film was awarded more Oscar nominations than any previous foreign language films in history - until this record was tied in the next year by Fanny and Alexander (1983) (with six nominations and four wins). Both films would be surpassed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which earned ten nominations and four wins including Best Foreign Language Film, including a rare Best Picture nomination.] The Verdict brought director Sidney Lumet his fourth -- and last unsuccessful Best Director Oscar nomination. (A fifth nomination was as co-writer of the Adapted Screenplay for Prince of the City (1981).) Ben Kingsley deservedly won the Best Actor Oscar (with his first nomination and first Oscar) for his intelligent, sensitive, and realistic portrayal of Mohandas Gandhi's life and his doctrine of non-violent civil disobedience in Gandhi.

With his half-Indian (birth name Krishna Bhanji) and half-English descent, Kingsley became the first South Asian performer to achieve such a feat. All of newcomer Kingsley's Best Actor competitors were veteran actors - the two strongest were: Dustin Hoffman (with his fifth nomination) as Michael Dorsey/'Dorothy' Michaels, who impersonated a feminist woman and fooled his/her co-actors in order to acquire a daytime soap-TV starring role, in Tootsie Paul Newman (with his sixth unsuccessful career nomination) as alcoholic, ambulance-chasing, Boston trial lawyer Frank P.

Galvin involved in a medical malpractice case in The Verdict The other two Best Actor nominees were: Jack Lemmon (with his eighth and last nomination, a two-time Oscar winner) as father Ed Horman searching for his missing writer/son Charles in violence-torn Central America in Missing Peter O'Toole (with his seventh of eight career nominations, tying him with Richard Burton for the same number of losing nominations) as a former, alcoholic, Hollywood swashbuckler actor named Alan Swann in director Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (the film's sole nomination) The Best Actress winner was Meryl Streep (with her fourth nomination and second Oscar win) as tormented Polish refugee Sophie Zawistowska in New York, the survivor of the Nazi concentration camps (following her fateful 'choice' between which of her two children would die), who has an unstable relationship with a driven Brooklynite (Kevin Kline) in director/screenwriter Alan J. Pakula's melodramatic film Sophie's Choice (the film's sole Oscar win out of five nominations). [Streep's win prevented Jessica Lange from winning both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars this year.

This was Streep's first Best Actress Oscar following her supporting win in 1979.

She was nominated consecutively from 1981-1983 as Best Actress.] The other Best Actress nominees included: 1964 Oscar-winner Julie Andrews (with her third nomination) in the title role of Victoria ("a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman"), a British singer/transvestite in a drag bar, in Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria 1980 Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek (with her third nomination) as Jack Lemmon's (as Ed Horman) daughter-in-law Beth Horman - a wife whose husband Charles Horman (John Shea) went 'missing and who seeks the truth in Chile in Missing Debra Winger (with her first nomination) as Paula Pokrifki, a local millworker (who falls in love with officer candidate Richard Gere) in the Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School's town in director Taylor Hackford's An Officer and a Gentleman Jessica Lange as tragic, ill-fated, self-destructive, mentally-ill starlet Frances Farmer in Frances [Lange was also nominated - and won - in the Supporting Actress category for her bubbly role in Tootsie, mirroring the pattern of previous double-nominees.

This was the first time, since 1942, and only the third time in all Oscar history, that an actress was nominated in both the lead and supporting categories. It also happened to Fay Bainter in 1938 and Teresa Wright in 1942. It was also only the fourth time in Academy history that a performer had competed in two acting categories in the same year. Lange was the first acting double-nominee since 1944 when Barry Fitzgerald was also nominated for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards for Going My Way (1944).] Louis Gossett, Jr. (with his sole career nomination and win) was selected as the Best Supporting Actor for his role as the tough, principled drill sergeant Emil Foley who shapes recruit Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. [It was a memorable win for Gossett - he was the third African-American actor to win an acting Oscar, following Hattie McDaniel who won in 1939 for Gone With The Wind (1939) , and Sidney Poitier who won the Best Actor award for Lilies of the Field (1963).

Gossett was the first black actor to win an Academy Award since Poitier's earlier win, and he was the first African-American actor to win Best Supporting Actor.] The remaining Best Supporting Actor nominees were: Charles Durning (with his first nomination) as the governor in the mediocre film version of the Broadway play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (the film's only nomination) [Durning also starred in an un-nominated role as Jessica Lange's widowed father Les who falls in love with Dorothy Michaels (Hoffman) in Tootsie.] John Lithgow (with his first nomination) as trans-sexual (or trans-gender) ex-football player Roberta Muldoon, in director George Roy Hill's version of John Irving's best-seller The World According to Garp James Mason (with his third and last unsuccessful nomination) as the scheming lawyer Ed Concannon in The Verdict Robert Preston (with his sole career nomination) as Parisian homosexual nightclub drag performer Toddy, who persuaded Victoria (co-star Julie Andrews) to pass herself off as a man), in Victor/Victoria [Note: Preston wasn't even nominated for his definitive and famous role as Dr.

Henry Hill in The Music Man (1962).] And finally, in the Best Supporting Actress category, Jessica Lange (who was also nominated and lost in the Best Actress category for her tortured portrayal of the lead character in Frances) was nominated and won for her role as Julie, 'Dorothy's' unknowing, submissive best girlfriend in Tootsie. One of Lange's co-stars, Teri Garr (with her only nomination) was also competing in the category for her performance as Sandy, Hoffman's unemployed and rejected girlfriend. And Kim Stanley (with her second and last unsuccessful nomination) was nominated for her role as Lange's mother in Frances. The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were: Lesley Ann Warren (with her only nomination) as a gangster's girlfriend named Norma in Victor/Victoria Glenn Close (in her film debut and with her first of five unsuccessful nominations in the 80s) as Jenny Fields (T.S.

Garp's - Robin William's - unmarried, eccentric and liberated mother) in The World According to Garp The Best Original Song category had fierce competition, with "Up Where We Belong" (An Officer and a Gentleman) edging out strong nominees including: "It Might Be You" (Tootsie) and "Eye of the Tiger" ( Rocky III ). This year, an Honorary Award was presented to Mickey Rooney, "in recognition of his 60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances." Rooney had earlier won a Special Oscar in 1938 (co-awarded to "juvenile player" Deanna Durbin), and had acquired four nominations (with no wins) - two Best Actor nods for Babes in Arms (1939) and The Human Comedy (1943), and two Best Supporting Actor honors for The Bold and the Brave (1956), and The Black Stallion (1979).

Oscar Snubs and Omissions: Except for its Best Original Screenplay nomination (for director/writer Barry Levinson's debut film), Diner was devoid of other nominations for its cast, such as Ellen Barkin for her role as Daniel Stern's neglected wife Beth. And Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was sorely under-appreciated (with only two nominations for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Visual Effects - and no wins), lacking Best Picture and Best Director nominations. In addition, Jordan S. Chronenweth's Cinematography, the Costume Design, and Vangelis' Original Score also suffered the Academy's lack of recognition. Both director/co-writer Jerzy Skolimowski's political allegory and compelling drama Moonlighting and director/co-writer Wim Wenders' complex film about film-making, The State of Things, lacked nominations of any kind. George Miller's Australian film The Road Warrior with Mel Gibson was nomination-less, as was Paul Bartel's black comedy Eating Raoul, and director Fassbinder's West German film Lola.

Other acting nominations were denied Albert Finney and Diane Keaton as a broken-up married couple in Alan Parker's Shoot the Moon, and Jeremy Irons as Nowak - a Polish workers' foreman in Moonlighting. Director/writer Walter Hill's buddy cop/criminal film 48 HRS (with no nominations). was lacking in nominations for leads Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. And in an early role, Sean Penn was snubbed for his memorable portrayal of stoned surfer-dude Jeff Spicoli in Amy Heckerling's coming of age teen-comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Disney's TRON, with two nominations for Best Sound and Best Costume Design, was disqualified for a Best Visual Effects award because the Academy believed that it "cheated" by using a computer - the concept of using computers to craft environments, rather than drawing them by hand, was considered inauthentic. [Three years later, Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) received an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, highlighted by Pixar's CGI "stained glass knight" effect using computer animation.

An additional four years later, James Cameron's The Abyss (1989) was also honored with a Best Visual Effects Oscar (the film's only win) for using computer animation.] Tobe Hooper's effective horror film (with producer/co-screenwriter Steven Spielberg), Poltergeist , received only three nominations (without wins): Best Original Score (Jerry Goldsmith), Best Sound Effects, and Best Visual Effects. There were no nods for the psychic Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), young Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke), the two main leads (JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson), the screenplay, or the director. Two films suffered, in particular, because there were only three nominees for Best Visual Effects. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , a blockbuster film, was devoid of nominations - for Ricardo Montalban's performance as Khan Noonien Singh, for James Horner's musical score, or for the film's visual effects. Also amazing was that another film with fantastic visual effects, Jim Henson's Muppet-fantasy The Dark Crystal (with no nominations), was passed over in many categories (technical awards and score, to name a few).

Alan Parker's expressionistic rock musical Pink Floyd: The Wall was also overlooked, especially in the Best Original Song and Best Sound categories. Richard Attenborough dies at 90; actor directed, produced 'Gandhi' - LA Times Richard Attenborough dies at 90; actor directed, produced 'Gandhi' Lord Richard Attenborough George Rose / Los Angeles Times Richard Attenborough with Oscars for director and best film for "Gandhi" and Ben Kingsley with his lead actor Oscar at the Academy Awards on April 11, 1983. Richard Attenborough with Oscars for director and best film for "Gandhi" and Ben Kingsley with his lead actor Oscar at the Academy Awards on April 11, 1983. (George Rose / Los Angeles Times) Dennis McLellan Lord Richard Attenborough, who won best picture and best director Oscars for 'Gandhi,' dies at 90 Lord Richard Attenborough, the respected British actor and Academy Award-winning director of “Gandhi,” the multiple-Oscar-winning best picture of 1982, has died. He was 90.

Attenborough died Sunday, his son Michael told the BBC in London. No cause was given, but he had been in poor health after a fall in 2008. Once described by Variety as “one of the stoutest pillars of the British film industry,” Attenborough was an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a World War II veteran who became a familiar screen face in postwar British films. One of his most notable early roles was Pinkie Brown, a psychopathic young gang leader, in the 1947 crime-thriller “Brighton Rock” — a starring role that Attenborough originated on the London stage four years earlier. Over more than six decades he appeared in more than 70 films, including “Guns at Batasi,” “The Great Escape,” “Seance on a Wet Afternoon,” “The Flight of the Phoenix,” “The Sand Pebbles,” “Doctor Dolittle,” “10 Rillington Place,” “Brannigan,” “Jurassic Park,” “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” and the 1994 remake of “Miracle on 34th Street,” in which he played Kris Kringle.

Affectionately known as Dickie, Attenborough made his directorial debut in 1969 with “Oh! What a Lovely War,” a musical satire of World War I. Known as a “socially engaged” filmmaker who often focused on major historical figures, he went on to direct 11 other films. Among them were “Young Winston,” “A Bridge Too Far,” “Magic,” “A Chorus Line,” “Cry Freedom,” “Chaplin” and “Shadowlands.” “Gandhi,” Attenborough’s 1982 film about the life of Mohandas Gandhi, the nonviolent spiritual and political leader of India’s fight for independence from British rule, won eight Academy Awards, including a best actor Oscar for Ben Kingsley. Notable Deaths Photos of leaders, stars and other notable figures who died in 2014. With “Gandhi,” Attenborough not only won the Oscar for best director but, as the film's producer, he also took home the best picture Oscar.

“Gandhi,” The Times of London reported in 1993, earned “more Oscars and a bigger international market than any British film before.” The epic movie was the culmination of Attenborough's 20-year effort to bring Gandhi's life story to the big screen, an obsession that began when he read a biography of him in 1962. “Every career decision I've made since then has been tempered by my love affair with this one project,” Attenborough told the New York Times in 1981. “I've given up 40 acting roles and a dozen directing assignments to pursue it.” During Attenborough's pursuit, four screenwriters worked on scripts for the proposed movie, which numerous film companies rejected for being totally uncommercial.

To keep his Gandhi project alive, Attenborough is said to have mortgaged his house, sold his cars, hocked his paintings and taken roles in what he deemed “crap movies.” At one point, as Newsweek reported in 1982, Attenborough turned down an offer from Laurence Olivier to become associate director of the National Theatre in London because, as Attenborough explained, “it would have meant giving up ‘Gandhi' forever.” Attenborough — he was knighted in 1976 and became Lord Attenborough in 1993 — was known to cheerfully downplay his achievements as a director. He once told the London Times that his filmmaking “style is preconceived … a bit mundane. I sometimes wish I had been a bit more unconventional.” In a 2003 interview with Variety, he said: “I’m not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.

“If you have a piece of subject matter like ‘Cry Freedom' [his 1987 film about black South African activist Stephen Biko], where I desperately, desperately want to express my horror and opposition to apartheid, the only way to do it is to direct. “There are things I want to say: They are very important to me, and, not being a writer, I do it through movies.” Born in Cambridge, England, on Aug. 29, 1923, Attenborough was the eldest of three brothers whose father was principal of University College in Leicester. Attenborough and his brothers, John and David — David became a noted broadcaster and naturalist — grew up in a home in which both parents were politically and socially active. “I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s,” Attenborough said in a 1999 interview with the British newspaper The Journal. “My father and mother were responsible for bringing many Jewish people out of Germany, some on to the staff of the university.” Indeed, he recalled, he and his brothers “suddenly acquired two sisters.

My parents adopted these two Jewish girls who were meant to be reunited with their parents who were in a concentration camp, and who, of course, never were [reunited].” Attenborough first became interested in acting at age 11 when his father took him to London to see Charlie Chaplin's silent film classic “The Gold Rush.” “I was devastated by the skills of an actor who could make you laugh and cry at the same time,” Attenborough told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1993, after the release of his movie “Chaplin,” starring Robert Downey Jr. After first appearing in grammar-school productions and then performing regularly with the local amateur dramatic society, Attenborough won a competitive scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London in 1940. While at RADA, where his acting earned him the prestigious annual Bancroft Medal, he made his film debut playing a terrified sailor in Noel Coward and David Lean's “In Which We Serve,” a 1942 World War II drama about a British destroyer.

Soon after leaving the academy in 1942, he made his West End debut in Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing.” He played significant roles in a handful of West End productions before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1943. After a stint in the RAF’s film production unit — during which he played a leading role in “Journey Together,” a tale of RAF cadets — he spent the rest of the war flying film reconnaissance missions over Germany. In January 1945, Attenborough married actress Sheila Sim, with whom he had three children, Jane, Charlotte and Michael. Both Attenborough and his wife were original cast members of “The Mousetrap,” the Agatha Christie murder mystery that opened in London in 1952. Attenborough played Det. Sgt. Trotter for two years. Known as the world’s longest-running stage production, “The Mousetrap” is still being performed. Unhappy with the quality of many of the films he was appearing in during the ’50s, Attenborough teamed with his close friend, actor-screenwriter Bryan Forbes, to found the independent production company Beaver Films in 1959.

The first film they produced was “The Angry Silence,” a 1960 drama about factory unrest for which Attenborough played the critically acclaimed central role. He and Forbes also joined director Guy Green, actor Jack Hawkins and producers Basil Dearden and Michael Relph to launch Allied Film Makers. Among the films for which Attenborough served as producer over the next few years were the Forbes-directed “Whistle Down the Wind,” “The L-Shaped Room” and “Seance on a Wet Afternoon.” Once described by a British newspaper as being “the major statesman of British cinema,” Attenborough served as chairman of the board of governors of the British Film Institute, president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, president of the British Screen Advisory Council and president of the British National Film and Television School. Among other things, he also was chairman and president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, chairman of Channel Four Television, chancellor of the University of Sussex, a trustee of the Tate Gallery and a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

“His public image is of a passionate, impetuous, concerned, kindly, generous man — an idealist dedicated to human principles and utterly free of cynicism,” film critic David Robinson, who served as a consultant on “Chaplin,” told Variety in 1995. “The biggest surprise is that the real man is not much different.” Attenborough's daughter, Jane Holland, and his granddaughter, Lucy, were killed in the 2004 tsunami caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Besides his son Michael, Attenborough is survived by his wife, daughter Charlotte and his brother David. The New York Times: Best Pictures Ben Kingsley�s Journey From Hamlet to Gandhi By LESLIE BENNETTS Two years ago, Ben Kingsley, an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, was playing Mr. Squeers in the original London production of ''Nicholas Nickleby.'' ''It was killingly hard work and burned up a lot of an actor's brain cells,'' Mr. Kingsley recalled. ''So my wife started putting books in front of me in order to relax me and ease my blasted mind.

One of the books was a biography of Gandhi.'' Six days later, deeply immersed in the life of the Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mr. Kingsley received a call from Sir Richard Attenborough, the actor and director, who had been trying for almost 20 years to start a movie about Gandhi. For nearly that long, Mr. Attenborough had also been searching for the right actor to play Gandhi, with little success. Would Mr. Kingsley be interested and available for a screen test? He was indeed. ''And from the moment Ben came on the screen, he was absolutely mesmeric,'' reported Mr. Attenborough, who produced and directed the film. ''There was no question he was the one.'' Although Mr. Kingsley has been acclaimed in Britain for roles ranging from Hamlet to the title part in Brecht's ''Baal,'' the 38-year-old actor is little known in the United States. That should change with ''Gandhi,'' which opened last week at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.

An immense 3-hour 20-minute epic biography, the film traces the life of Gandhi from his arrival in South Africa as a young lawyer in 1893, through his crucial role in the birth of modern India, to his assassination in 1948 at the age of 79. The cast also includes Sir John Gielgud, Candice Bergen, Martin Sheen, Athol Fugard, Trevor Howard, John Mills and the Indian stage actress Rohini Hattangadhi as Gandhi's wife, among scores of others. Provides the Magnetic Center But it is Mr. Kingsley who provides the magnetic center. Mr. Attenborough's search for the perfect Gandhi was long and frustrating, but when he finally found Mr. Kingsley, his choice seemed eerily appropriate. Although born and raised in England, Mr. Kingsley is half Indian: his mother was an English model and his father, a physician, was Indian. Mr. Kingsley's family has not lived in India for three generations: his paternal grandfather, a spice trader, left India to settle in Zanzibar, where Mr. Kingsley's father lived until going to England at the age of 14.

Despite what Mr. Kingsley calls ''a thoroughly English upbringing'' in Manchester, he was born Krishna Bhanji (he changed his name as a young man beginning his theatrical career) and bears a striking physical resemblance to Gandhi. When he began to research the life of Gandhi, Mr. Kingsley learned that his own family had even come from the same village as the Indian leader. ''There are certain historical figures and moments that I have personally always found overwhelming,'' said Mr. Kingsley. ''Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, for example, and old newsreel films of Gandhi. That kind of documentary evidence feeds me as an actor, and I have always collected them. Gandhi was one of my source figures: a prototype human being. He was an utterly remarkable man, in his intellect, his energy and his integrity - a combination that was constantly apparent.'' 'An Awesome Responsibility' But the prospect of actually recreating Gandhi on film was daunting. ''My reaction was similar to my reaction when I got the part of Hamlet,'' said Mr. Kingsley.

''It's an awesome responsibility, and the weight of it sort of lands between your shoulder blades and bends you.'' He prepared for the role ''methodically and scientifically,'' he said, reading biographies, screening newsreel footage and poring over ''every photograph I could get my hands on.'' He continued: ''All you can do is just look at them and hope something goes in'' - Mr. Kingsley tapped his head -''that when the time comes will govern how you place yourself and use your body. Of course, the more you learn the more you realize how impossible the task seems.'' In his quest for authenticity, Mr. Kingsley not only shaved his head and lost 20 pounds on Gandhi's vegetarian diet, but he also studied yoga, began to meditate and learned to spin cotton thread on a wooden wheel, as Gandhi had done while holding conversations. For Mr. Kingsley, such training is the catalyst for an alchemy even he does not understand. ''When I have totally immersed myself in the mechanical, logical preparation of a part, if I and my craft are totally bonded and fully exploited, something else in me is awakened and begins to inform my work,'' he explained.

''The preparation is entirely systematic, practical and scientific, but when I play the role, whether it is Hamlet or Gandhi, some other kind of information comes to the forefront, a certain energy is released. There is some essence in me that adheres itself to the work. I can't tell you what it is - I can't tell you what the heart of my mystery is - because I don't know; all I know is that it is the product of extremely hard work.'' Thought He'd Be a Doctor Mr. Kingsley discovered his gifts as an actor rather late; he grew up expecting to become a doctor, like his father. But by the time he graduated from high school, he said, ''I had realized medicine was not right for me, and had to radically rethink what to do with my energies.'' Aimless, he joined an amateur dramatic society, found that he was ''transported'' by the thrill of audience response and went on to a job with a children's theater company in London. His progress was swift: after brief stints with two other repertory companies, Mr. Kingsley joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967.

He spent several seasons working there full-time, culminating in the role of Demetrius in Peter Brook's production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream.'' Mr. Kingsley then left the company to do a wide range of other work, including several plays by Athol Fugard, the South African writer, who appears as General Smuts in ''Gandhi.'' Mr. Kingsley appeared in ''Hello and Goodbye,'' ''Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act'' and, with Paul Scofield, in ''Dimetos.'' He has also appeared at the National Theater as Mosca in ''Volpone,'' Sparkish in ''The Country Wife'' and Trofimov in ''The Cherry Orchard.'' Mr. Kingsley is now an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. ''That means I have an emotional and artistic link but can do other things,'' he said. And he returns to the fold from time to time for various projects. 'Hamlet' a 'Turning Point' Playing Hamlet with the company in 1975 was ''probably the most important move I've ever made in my life,'' he said.

''That was a turning point in my approach to my work and my career.'' And it was in ''Hamlet'' that Richard Attenborough first saw Mr. Kingsley, whose work had been called to his attention by Mr. Attenborough's son, Michael, who is also a director. Of his six months in India filming ''Gandhi,'' Mr. Kingsley says, ''I've never been happier in my life, in terms of exercising my craft on something I utterly believed in.'' Mr. Attenborough and Mr. Kingsley both hope that the film will, among other things, revive and clarify Gandhi's image. ''Either he's become deified and mystified - which is very sad, because he has a lot to say to us in terms of political ideas - or people don't seem to know about him at all,'' the actor remarked. After finishing the film, Mr. Kingsley went home to be directed by his wife, Alison Sutcliffe, in a one-man play about Edmund Kean at the Harrogate Studio Theater in Yorkshire. When the Kingsleys had their first child last summer, they ''named him Edmund, after Edmund Kean,'' Mr. Kingsley added.

In Harold Pinter Film His most recent project was the film version of ''Betrayal,'' Harold Pinter's play about infidelity, in which Mr. Kingsley co-stars as the husband with Patricia Hodge as his wife and Jeremy Irons as his best friend. Mr. Kingsley recognizes that such exposure may have a marked impact on his career. ''I'll be a lot better known after 'Gandhi,' I suppose,'' he mused. ''It's possible that work will now be offered to me outside of the National Theater, the R.S.C. and a few English directors, as in the past. I do want to do more films and work with certain directors I've always admired.'' Whatever his arena, however, Mr. Kingsley seems at peace with his choice of life's work. ''I think I've recognized my function,'' he said softly. ''Until one recognizes one's function, one is denied an essential ingredient in life. A lot of people are not given an opportunity to recognize their functions; their choices can be too limited. But I'm a storyteller. I recognize the need to tell people stories, to engage them on a particular level.

I therefore need and thrive on the level of compressed association with my fellow human beings that only the theatrical event can bring. With essential truth in mind, it doesn't really matter what the story is.'' Ben Kingsley stars in the title role of "Gandhi," Richard Attenborough's panoramic portrait of the Indian leader. (Columbia Pictures) � Gandhi would have been amused at being played by a Brit, Nehru told Richard Attenborough — Quartz Attenborough’s Gandhi epic took 20 years of planning. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) Share Rachel Dwyer, Scroll.in August 29, 2014 The tributes to Richard Attenborough have been many, rich and well deserved. They bring together the many Attenboroughs, the actor that the older generation remembers for his role as Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock (1947), my generation for the Great Escape, and the younger for Jurassic Park. His role as a leading figure of the British film industry and the director of major films has been acknowledged, yet his greatest success was for directing the multi-Oscar winning Gandhi, often called Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982).

In Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke khiladi/The Chess-Players, 1977, Attenborough played General Outram. Weston (Tom Alter) tries to explain that Wajid Ali Shah as a poet, playwright and dancer is an accomplished and good king, but Outram, who has spent more than 30 years in India, manifests British bafflement at these alleged regal talents, saying …“[he is] a bad king. A frivolous, effeminate, irresponsible, worthless king…. he’s not the first, but he certainly deserves to be the last. We’ve put up with this nonsense long enough. Eunuchs, fiddlers, nautch-girls, and ‘muta’ wives and God knows what else. He can’t rule, he has no wish to rule, and therefore he has no business to rule.” However, Outram and others thought the British did have the business to rule so Avadh was annexed. His role in this episode and the 1857 Uprising was rewarded with a baronetcy, and his name adorns streets throughout the former empire, including Outram Ghat in Calcutta.

His statue still stands in Whitehall Gardens. Attenborough played Outram not as a dastardly imperialist villain but as a bluff British soldier whose failure to understand the culture of India underlay much of the later troubled history. Earlier attempts Many earlier attempts to film the Mahatma’s life had come to nought, from DW Griffiths to David Lean and Emeric Pressburger. Attenborough’s Gandhi epic took 20 years in the planning, as Attenborough recounts in his book about the making of the film, which also appeared in 1982. Attenborough was introduced to Nehru in 1963 by their mutual friend Earl Mountbatten. Nehru shared photographs and made further introductions.

The last time Attenborough saw him, Nehru said: ‘Whatever you do, do not deify him – that is what we have done in India – and he was too great a man to be deified.’ Indira Gandhi gave her formal approval: ‘The film has captured the spirit of Gandhiji’, as well as enabling 400,000 Indians to act as extras in the recreation of the funeral procession and authorising $6.5 million from the National Film Development Corporation towards the $22 million production. Not all politicians showed such support: Morarji Desai threatened to kill himself if the film went ahead and questions about the making of the film were asked in parliament. The film follows a classic Hollywood biopic structure and contributed to the British “Raj Revival” that was part of Thatcherite Britain’s reassessment of history in the 1980s, although Attenborough film’s is critical of the imperial venture.

As one would expect, the film was aimed squarely at a global audience rather than a specifically Indian one, with much prominence given to several non-Indian figures, including Mountbatten, Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade) and the photojournalist, Margaret Bourke-White. Key protagonists such as Annie Besant, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo and Ambedkar are absent. Casting Gandhi was always going to be a major problem, but in India, casting anyone as Gandhi was controversial. A female journalist objected to Gandhi being portrayed at all, but if he must be, said he should appear on screen “as a moving light”. In a rare loss of temper, Attenborough snapped back, ‘Madam, I am not making a film about bloody Tinkerbell!’ A foreign Gandhi The final choice was Ben Kingsley (Krishna Pandit Bhanji), an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company, who was partly Gujarati. Although Kingsley was not Indian, Gandhi himself was, to all purposes, a diasporic Indian when he returned to India in 1915, after 21 years in South Africa and 3 years in London.

Gandhi himself is eager to find himself on his arrival to India, and like many other such foreign seekers, he adopts Indian dress, tours the country by third class train, is shocked by poverty, people travelling on the train roof, and even rides an elephant. Kingsley was clearly more plausible than other actors considered from Richard Burton to Dirk Bogarde to Anthony Hopkins. It seems no Indian actor was ever considered for the role. Even Nehru supported the choice of a non-Indian, according to Attenborough: “I paid Nehru a second visit months later, and he made two observations. The first concerned the problem of finding an actor to play Gandhi. I needed a trained professional, not just a lookalike. The prime minister’s own surprising choice was Alec Guinness, which took me aback because Alec was English. “‘The nationality is unimportant,’ Nehru declared. ‘All that matters is that he should be very good. Besides, the idea of being portrayed by an Englishman would have made Bapu laugh a great deal.’” A human portrayal Kingsley’s portrayal of Gandhi was extraordinary as he came across as human, warm and funny, even though his saintliness overcomes strange features of personality.

Kingsley’s superb performance made him the embodiment of the freedom movement, the Indian nation, and in this western film, the idea of Indianness, who dominates the entire film which despite its clear inaccuracies is a great biopic with magnificent set-pieces such as the Salt March. However, the version of Indian history created by Attenborough’s film has become part of the way in which India knows Gandhi and the film adds to the mythology of this extraordinary person. Despite a mixed critical reception from historians and nationalists, the film’s epic and great qualities were recognised and reinforced by eight Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. This Indian part of his work would be enough to guarantee Attenborough’s greatness. He never sat back, and used his considerable fame to good effect. In later years, this director whose films once needled the establishment became a key figure in it, as Chancellor of Sussex University and patron of the arts. He was seen as a “luvvie”, an actor whose sentences are peppered with “lovely” and “darling”, which he took with great humour, calling his entertaining 2008 autobiography, Entirely Up to You, Darling.

This dedicated service to his career in film as well as to the institutions in which it was formed, is seen also in his younger brother, Sir David Attenborough, an equally great British and global institution, a wildlife broadcaster who also set up BBC2. They really don’t make them like them any more. This post originally appeared on Scroll.in. Read full story Richard Attenborough: The film bosses wanted Gandhi to be sexy - and be played by Richard Burton | Daily Mail Online Richard Attenborough: The film bosses wanted Gandhi to be sexy - and be played by Richard Burton comments My father was the reason why it became so important to me to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian leader - so much so that I would pursue this quest for 20 years, suffer all sorts of rejection in trying to raise the finance and very nearly bankrupt myself. The Governor - as my brothers and I always called my father - had always wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become an academic. When I decided on acting as a career I knew in my heart of hearts that he was disappointed. Even as an adult, I still desperately wanted to prove myself to him.

If I could make a film with something important to say, perhaps he would take real pride in what I was doing. So I was receptive when a proposal for a film on the Mahatma - a Sanskrit word meaning 'Great soul' - was put to me in 1962. The charismatic Ben Kingsley who played the role of Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi was someone the Governor held in very high esteem. Back in 1931, when I was eight years old, Gandhi had come to Britain to take part in discussions about the future independence of India. And we'd seen him together, the Governor and I, at the local cinema in some grainy black-and-white newsreel footage. I remembered the sneer in the commentator's strangled upper-class vowels as he described the high hopes this small, nut-brown man had for his people. I remembered that Winston Churchill had famously shrugged him off as 'that naked fakir'. I remembered Gandhi had taken tea with the King at Buckingham Palace, clad only in his loincloth and sandals.

When reporters asked if he was under-dressed, the Mahatma retorted: 'I believe His Majesty was wearing enough for both of us.' One American studio intimated it would back the film if Richard Burton played Gandhi because he was 'sexy' All this came back to me 30 years later while I sat facing a man named Moti Kothari at the Waldorf in London as he earnestly explained his idea for a film to me. What I remembered with the greatest clarity was how the people around my father and me in the cinema had sniggered during the newsreel, and the Governor saying: 'They don't understand. Gandhi is extraordinary. He is truly a remarkable man.' That was good enough for me. And so I acceded to Kothari's initial request that I should read a biography of Gandhi. I didn't know Kothari at all. He had rung me out of the blue after getting my number from a mutual friend. He was very insistent and despite some misgivings, I agreed to meet him. A grave, middle-aged Indian, he was a dedicated follower of Gandhi who had left India in disgust following the Mahatma's assassination in January 1948.

Now he felt he had a mission to disseminate the story of his life. His assertion that I was the person to make such a film took me by surprise. A screen actor since 1942, I had been fortunate enough to achieve star billing and all the trappings of celebrity. But I'd found myself typecast as the cheeky Cockney in stories which seemed to lack any real artistry or substance. In an effort to achieve something worthwhile, I'd recently become an independent producer, but, at the time of my meeting with Mr Kothari, I could lay claim to only two low-budget films with a third in production. I certainly hadn't directed anything. I began reading the biography and less than a tenth of the way through something knocked me for six. The young Gandhi, then a newly qualified lawyer practising in South Africa, was walking along a pavement with a friend when two white men approached from the opposite direction. Gandhi's friend pulled him into the gutter to let the lordly pair pass unimpeded, as was customary at the time.

After they'd gone Gandhi said calmly to his companion: 'It has always been a mystery to me that men should feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow human beings.' I was thunderstruck. He was then in his early 20s and, for me, this observation demonstrated a perception far beyond his years - one that was, indeed, as the Governor had said, truly remarkable. I rang Mr Kothari to ask if his project had any backers. 'Money,' I said. 'Have you got any money to make the film?' He sounded bewildered. 'No, Mr Attenborough, I don't have any money.' I took a deep breath and told him I would assemble the funding because I was determined this film would be made. What was more, I would direct it myself. This was totally insane. Why would anyone in their right mind entrust the direction of a major production, set in a faraway land and no doubt costing a fortune, to an actor totally devoid of any relevant experience? Award-winner: Richard Attenborough on the set of Gandhi The only person who supported me in this patently absurd ambition was my wife, Sheila.

She said if this was something I really cared about, then I shouldn't let anything or anyone put me off. What neither of us realised was that the filming of Gandhi would impact on every aspect of our lives and those of our three young children for years to come. At that time, we owned our Queen Anne house in Richmond outright. I had a Rolls with a personalised number-plate and Sheila had a Jag. We had the beginnings of an art collection. We had a nanny and a chauffeur. Bills came in and they were paid. All this, with one phone call, I was placing in jeopardy. In the years that followed, bills weren't paid on time, and I was often absent from home, either trying to raise money or doing lucrative acting jobs in distant places, just to keep the project afloat. At one point, I sold three paintings by Stanley Spencer, my pride and joy, for a pittance to tide us over. From the start, I knew I would face enormous problems with the sheer logistics of the epic story I intended to tell.

In India, I would need the co-operation of the government, the armed forces, police, railways and, above all, the huge and lumbering bureaucracy that we, the British, had left behind. But I had contacts. I knew Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last British viceroy in India, because my first film, In Which We Serve, was based on his wartime naval exploits. He put my idea to the present prime minister, Pandit Nehru, who gave approval in principle for the project. So I flew to Delhi to meet him. Nehru was a revelation. In his office he produced an album of snapshots, his collection recording India's long march to independence, and we got down on our hands and knees to pore over them. Throughout he referred to Gandhi as Bapu, which, he told me was the respectful Hindi word for father. Here was a snap of Bapu spinning cotton at his ashram. There was another with the young Nehru himself, laughing together like naughty schoolboys. The prime minister told me priceless anecdotes. I was elated. I paid Nehru a second visit months later, and he made two observations. The first concerned the problem of finding an actor to play Gandhi.

I needed a trained professional, not just a lookalike. Pictured in 1982: Richard with the nine Academy Awards awarded for Gandhi The prime minister's own surprising choice was Alec Guinness, which took me aback because Alec was English. 'The nationality is unimportant,' Nehru declared. 'All that matters is that he should be very good. Besides, the idea of being portrayed by an Englishman would have made Bapu laugh a great deal.' His second observation was the only injunction he ever issued: 'Richard, do not turn him into a deity; he was too great a man to be deified.' But after this encouraging start came years of frustration. Four billionaire brothers, a maharaja and a maverick movie-mogul would let me down. And over and over again, Hollywood refused to invest a cent in my epic project. The breakthrough came when Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, was re-elected as India's prime minister, and provided unstinting support. Not only would her government put up a third of the funding, but she miraculously opened doors that had previously been shut.

RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share I couldn't count the number of times I'd flown out to India, totally broke, or the endless humiliating hours I'd waited in the stifling corridors of ministerial buildings, seeking permission to film in various places only to get bogged down in layer upon layer of bureaucracy. But now there would be no more standing in corridors. I had an official letter confirming that I could call on the unpaid collaboration of all three armed services in India, the police and the entire railway network. Although there was still more money to be raised, at last I could get under way. We made final decisions about location sites, built sets, amassed costumes and embarked on the thousand-and-one negotiations that would set the whole production in motion. At this stage, I had no leading actor. Alec Guinness had long ago rejected the part of Gandhi, saying he was 'too grey-eyed, too heavy and just plain too old'. Other stars had been approached or suggested. One American studio had intimated they might be prepared to back me if I cast Richard Burton because he was sexy - an idea so idiotic it was not worth further thought.

My own first choice had been Anthony Hopkins, who was really keen and even checked into a health farm, losing a couple of stone before concluding it would be physically impossible. Over the years, Dirk Bogarde, Peter Finch, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay all excluded themselves for the same reason. Brotherly love: Richard (right) with brothers David and Johnny Finally, I approached John Hurt, who had just received rave reviews for The Elephant Man. He was interested but again doubted he could look convincing as Gandhi. So we agreed on a full makeup and wardrobe test. I was in the process of setting this up when my theatre-director son Mike remembered a young actor who'd been a magical Hamlet some years ago at Stratford. His professional name was Ben Kingsley. I went to see him in a play and thought him absolutely wonderful. I went backstage to ask if he would test on the same day as John Hurt. Ben, 36 at the time, believed my sudden appearance had some kind of mystical synergy because, only days earlier, his wife had bought him a biography of Gandhi which he'd just started to read. It was only then I learned his name was originally Krishna Bhanji.

He was the son of an English mother and an Asian GP; his father's side of the family had come from Gujarat - Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace. As Ben Kingsley, he had worked his way up the ladder of the Royal Shakespeare Company from spear-carrier to leading man. However, his screen experience was limited to a few brief appearances in Coronation Street and one small part in a film. We screen-tested John and Ben, with full body and facial make-up and clad only in the dhoti, a loincloth of white homespun cotton draped from waist to knee. After I'd seen the rushes, I invited John to view his test. 'Oh, Christ,' he said after a moment, 'I look like a bloody front-row forward.' Then together we looked at Ben's test. Suddenly, here was a lithe Indian man, totally at home in his skin, who seemed to have worn a dhoti all his life. And he radiated a charisma that you instantly believed could bind millions to his cause. It was John who spoke first. 'Dickie, my dear, you've found your Mahatma.

Best of luck to you both.' We began shooting in 1980, 18 years after that first meeting with Moti Kothari in the Waldorf. Kothari was sadly dead by then, but in tribute to him a Hindu priest blessed the camera. Then we set to work. The biggest scene we had to prepare was the reenactment of the assassinated Gandhi's huge funeral procession through Delhi, which we planned to film on the 33rd anniversary of the actual event. Richard was inspired by his father, the Governor, in the Gandhi film We researched everything meticulously. We even knew the exact number of uniformed guards lining the route. What couldn't be counted were the people who'd packed Rajpath, the ceremonial avenue in Delhi, to pay their last respects. In the old newsreels we watched, they'd stretched as far as the eye could see. And somehow, long before the advent of computer-generated imagery, we had to recruit a similar mass of citizens, making sure no one was dressed inappropriately. Rehearsals were held on a disused airfield. I mapped out in great detail each of the shots we needed. We would get one chance at this.

It would all have to be done during a single mile-long journey. Eleven separate camera crews would be needed. We recruited 25,000 'front-line' extras, all of whom had to be rehearsed and costumed - and paid in cash. But there then remained the problem of attracting the mass of people required for the background. That was why we chose to film on the anniversary, in the hope that this might bring out enormous crowds anyway. But, just in case, we also laid on trucks to bring in thousands more from the surrounding countryside. On the evening before, we held a briefing for the camera units. I told them we had no idea how big tomorrow's unpaid crowd would be. It might only be a few hundred or as many as a quarter of a million. Whatever the numbers, we only had permission to film for one morning, so we had to press on and do the best we could. Work started at 3am. By sunrise, the actors in the procession were dressed, made-up and gradually moving into their allotted positions. And I was glad to see a tide of local people beginning to pour through the entry points, where wardrobe assistants were handing out suitable clothing to cover anything too modern.

For the master shot, I was with the crew of a remote-controlled camera positioned on top of a crane, which was to rise from the catafalque in one smooth movement, pulling back and back to take in the thousandstrong cortege, the troops, the horses, the honour guard, the massed crowd, and the domes and minarets of India's seat of government. Everything was finally in position and the whole area jam-packed with people as far as the eye could see. Watching what was being filmed on a monitor, I gave the signal. 'Action!' yelled the first assistant through his megaphone, and the procession began. My excitement mounted with the crane arm. So far, the shot was perfect. But as the camera soared past the branches of a tree, a little Indian boy turned, looked directly into the lens and stuck out his tongue. There was no time to reflect on this, no possibility of repeating the ruined shot. With only three hours remaining, we had to press on. And we did, filming the procession for a few minutes from one position, stopping, racing to new positions and starting again. It was clear at the planning stage that I couldn't direct this sequence from a distance.

I had to be in the thick of it. This is why a portly British general with overlong, white hair and horn-rimmed glasses makes a fleeting appearance in the finished film, walking backwards behind the bier. Then suddenly, I realised the dummy representing the dead Mahatma lying there would not pass muster in close-up. An urgent message was sent to Ben, the one actor who hadn't been needed and who'd been given the day off. He arrived in the nick of time, taking the place of the dummy for our final shot, and lay exposed and motionless. And then it was all over. We were inundated with calls from newspapers wanting to know how many people had turned up. We asked the police, who'd manned the entry points, and the figure they gave was 400,000 - the biggest crowd scene in film history. I was back in my hotel room when a shaken Ben came to see me. On his return from the set, he'd been handed an anonymous letter, delivered that morning before we began filming. It contained a threat to shoot him dead if he dared to lie on Mahatma Gandhi's bier. This isn't b****y Tinkerbell!

Diana Hawkins, Attenborough's business partner, writes: In an attempt to dispel widespread misconceptions about the film, Dick held a press conference in Delhi before we started shooting. The Indian Fourth Estate proved very lively - and the questions, though courteous, were all wide of the mark. Everyone, it seemed, had their own idea of what this film was really about. The project was a political and religious football - and it was getting kicked all over the place. I could sense Dick's frustration. Although a heroically patient man, there have been times in his life when the extreme pressures he places on himself make him go so red that he looks as if he's going to have a heart attack. I call these incidents the 'poppy-eyed screamers'. As the news conference wore on, I could see the red tide rising in his face. One young journalist asked if he was willing to confirm that Ben Kingsley made his screen debut in a pornographic film. This was met with an uncharacteristically terse denial. Then a middle-aged woman at the back of the room asked how we intended to show the Mahatma on screen.

Dick relaxed as he enthused about Ben, the acclaimed actor whose meticulous research had included studying Gandhi's voice and gait in old newsreels. The woman was unimpressed. This was sacrilege, she said. Richard needed to be aware that Gandhi was a deity in this country, not a mere mortal to be caricatured from newsreels. Dick said he was sorry she felt like this. How would she have him portray the Mahatma? 'Not at all. But if you must. .. as a moving light.' At this, Dick's patience finally snapped. 'Madam,' he riposted, 'I am not making a film about bloody Tinkerbell!' • Abridged extract from Entirely Up To You, Darling by Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins, published by Hutchinson, released today at £20. © 2008, Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins. To order a copy for £18 (p&amp;p free), call 0845 155 0720. Ben Kingsley Gandhi (1982) DVDRip (SiRiUs sHaRe) Torrent Downloads - download free torrents! Ian Charleson ... Rev.

Charlie Andrews Athol Fugard ... Gen. Jan Christiaan Smuts Günther Maria Halmer ... Dr. Herman Kallenbach (as Gunter Maria Halmer) Saeed Jaffrey ... Sardar Valabhhai Patel Geraldine James ... Meerabahen Alyque Padamsee ... Mohammed Ali Jinnah Amrish Puri ... Khan Roshan Seth ... Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Director: Richard Attenborough Nominated for 11 Oscars, won 8 Oscars for: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Writing )Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen) Codecs: DivX 3 / MP3 "The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived, without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not the commander of armies, nor the ruler of vast lands. He could not boast any scientific achievement or artistic gift.

Yet men, governments, dignitaries from all over the world, have joined hands today to pay homage to the little brown man in the loin cloth, who led his country to freedom." This quote is from the funeral scene in the 1982 film "Gandhi". Richard Attenborough directed this massive epic about the man that freed India. The film opens with Gandhi's assassination. The next scene, his funeral, is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history. Attenborough managed to recreate Gandhi's funeral on January 31st, 1981, the 33rd anniversary of the actual funeral. It is estimated that nearly 400,000 people were on hand to be a part of the filming the recreation. This film was made before CGI (computer generated images), so the funeral scene is probably the last live action crowd of that magnitude that will ever be filmed. Mahatma Gandhi's message of non-violent resistance is delivered in an interesting and enthralling body of art. This film has made and will make millions of people aware of the little brown man that took on the British Empire and won.

"Gandhi" serves both as entertainment and an important historical record of one of the most important figures in history. Ben Kingsley played Gandhi. He was the perfect for the role. He resembled the real Gandhi. He was young enough to portray Gandhi as a young man. He is a British actor that nailed the British influenced Indian accent. He is a wonderful actor that was patient and humble with such an important part. And he was a relatively unknown actor at the time, so the "big-time actor" persona did not get in the way of viewing the film. He did win both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best actor, for this role, which I agree he deserved. He became Gandhi. The cinematography was outstanding. Attenborough filmed "Gandhi" on location in India. The scenes of India are spectacular, and India is very much another character in the film. This film is as much about India itself as it is about Gandhi. Attenborough shows the audience the people of India from its countryside to the vast city of Calcutta. It is suggested by Kingsley, on the DVD, that Attenborough had a difficult time with the elite class in India at the time of filming.

They were against the making of such a film by an Englishman. Undeterred by their negative thinking, he persevered to enlist thousands of Indians to help make this film. Every crowd scene, he used real Indians from the area. Attenborough also won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best direction. This movie is a must see for everyone. It should be required viewing in high schools, as part of History class. The fight against prejudice will forever be relevant. It is also a beautiful work of art. This movie is not tainted by the embellishment of Hollywood (see "Pearl Harbor" for that). Of course, it would have been hard to screw up a movie about such a great man. ............................................................................................................... Here indeed is one of the great films of the 20th Century about one of the greatest men of the 20th Century. Ben Kingsley's interpretation of the Mahatma must go down in history as one of the most perfect cinema rôles ever carried out. Throughout the long film you forget you are watching an actor playing the part of a great man in history: you are watching the real Gandhi. A gigantic performance indeed.

Richard Attenborough's patient and perfect directing added all the superlatives possible to make a crowning achievement, transporting biographic films into another dimension. It is all there: from the most intimate and poignant portrait to the incredible crowd scenes, beautifully captured in the most painstaking photography. You do not just watch the scenes unfold – you live them, you feel them, so captivating they are; and Ravi Shankar's music tugs at you, spellbinds you, forces you into sympathy, admiration and so many other feelings. Enthralling: how such a cinematographic work of art can reach such proportions is truly amazing; this film is nothing less than a miracle. During 1971 I travelled a good bit around India; I constantly had to apologise to energetic Indians who approached me on the subject of the British Raj. I had not even been born. But as a young and unappointed ambassador, I felt it my duty to bow my head in that country which is a microcosm of the whole planet. Thanks to this film, `Gandhi', Attenborough and Kingsley have said just about all there was to say. * London, so of course it was a coincidence, and not a cute reference by the filmmakers.

When Gandhi (played by Ben Kingsley) travels to London, he stays at Kingsley Hall. * 300,000 extras appeared in the funeral sequence. About 200,000 were volunteers and 94,560 were paid a small fee (under contract). The sequence was filmed on 31st Jan 1981, the 33rd anniversary of Gandhi's funeral. 11 crews shot over 20,000 feet of film, which was pared down to 125 seconds in the final release. * Both Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins were originally considered for the role. * Ben Kingsley looked so much like Gandhi, many natives thought him to be Gandhi's ghost. * In John Ratzenberger's brief scene, his voice is dubbed. * Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim owned a share of the rights in Britain's longest-running play "The Mousetrap" which they sold to fund the production of this movie. * John Hurt and Tom Courtenay were among the actors approached by Richard Attenborough about playing the lead role.

Ben Kingsley was recommended for the role by Harold Pinter, who had seen him in a play; Pinter made the suggestion to Sam Spiegel, an associate of Attenborough's. * Ben Kingsley's (born Krishna Bhanji) paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Mahatma Gandhi was from. * It was Michael Attenborough, Richard Attenborough's son, who recommended Ben Kingsley to his father. * Trevor Howard shot his cameo as Judge Broomfield in two days. * The Ian Charleson part was first intended for 'Michael Denison' * Richard Attenborough first offered Candice Bergen her cameo role in 1966. * The last film of John Boxer. * Last film of Sir John Clements. * Dustin Hoffman was interested in playing Gandhi, but was offered Tootsie (1982). * For the funeral scene, advertisements calling for 400,000 extras were either distributed in pamphlets and by newspapers in Delhi. Extras were not allowed to wear anything other than white and as part of security measures, turnstiles were built at selected entry points for crowd control. The crew bought any clothing that was not white.

* No studio was interested in financing the film. Richard Attenborough cited that most of the financing were solicited from: 1. Joseph E. Levine whom agreed to finance in exchange of Attenborough directing A Bridge Too Far and Magic. 2. The sale of the ownership share of The Mousetrap 3. Jake Eberts, a friend of Attenborough. The remaining of the money were solicited from major companies in England minus the BBC. related torrents

Question: Who played the leading role in the 1982 film 'Gandhi'?
Answer: Ben Kingsley