Ben Kingsley, originally known as Krishna Banji, currently in the first flush of nuptial bliss with his fourth wife, Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro, will be a few moments. He's on the other side of the hotel room door finishing breakfast. While we wait in the corridor, I ask his minders how he prefers to be addressed. This is no small matter. Reportedly, he insisted that the opening credits for his 2006 film Lucky Number Slevin refer to his knighthood. He denied this. Still, on the film's poster, next to Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu and Morgan Freeman, was somebody called Sir Ben Kingsley.
"Sir Ben," says his American press agent. "Yes, Sir Ben," says another. Should I bow? "No," says his UK-based publicist.
I can't wait to get through that door. This, after all, is the man who described the experience of playing Gandhi as being like "having a layer of skin peeled off my eyeballs." This is the man who said of his new wife: "Without sounding pompous, she looks like a combination of ancient Egypt and ancient Rome," and "Daniela is like an ancient mythological princess. She has great, deep dignity. She moves like an ocean liner." Do ocean liners have great, deep dignity? Who cares? Please, please, please let him say something as adorably bonkers to me.
When the minders and I get into the suite, Kingsley isn't there. This is no good. Interviewees should be contactable by their interviewers in at least some minimal way. Then one of the suite's many interior doors opens, and Kingsley emerges sporting a V-neck top next to his chest. Oh dear. Ever since Michael Douglas wore a V-neck top next to chest in Basic Instinct, while trying to look hot and foxy for Sharon Stone and her lesbian friend at a nightclub, this has struck me as a sartorial faux pas for the older gent.
"Ah, yes. Stuart," says Kingsley, as though he has unexpectedly found a favorite, mislaid book. We settle down on vast sofas. Kingsley kindly makes sure I've got all the mineral water I need, and we begin.
I'm struck, I tell him, by the parallels between his recent marriage and the plot of one of his many new films. Elegy is an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel The Dying Animal, in which a septuagenarian cultural critic called David Kepesh discovers a sense of sexual possessiveness for a much, much younger woman (played in the film by Penelope Cruz). "Oh yes?" says Kingsley. Was he drawn to the role because there is a sense that this is an old man who has strong sexual desire in a society that regards that as a taboo or at least revolting? "It never crossed my mind. No, really it didn't."
Did he really not identify with Kepesh's predicament? After all, he is 63 and was rudely described in the Daily Mail as "bald as a coot," while his new wife is 34 and was described in the same article as "luscious." "There are parallels between the role and my life," he concedes.
But only because of "a Peter Brook quote to the effect that it's impossible to create if you are unhappy ... . I have a wonderful relationship with my wife. Unless you're really secure in your personal life, you might as well forget about it."
Lots of actors have tried. "Absolutely. I know some actors and they're going through hell, and they think they can use that baggage in their acting. They can't. The mistake that casting directors or producers often make is that if they cast actors who are antagonistic to each other in real life, that is going to work on screen. It won't.
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