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on 2007/10/2 1:16:59
On Gandhi Jayanti today, BT gets actors who played Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on-screen to describe their experiences.
'I want to be forever remembered as Gandhi'
Sir Ben Kingsley, Gandhi
I hope to be remembered as Gandhi forever. It’s a rather amusing story... my name was Krishna Bhanji. While Krishna is the name of a god, Bhanji is typically a Muslim surname.
The irony is that I changed my name from Krishna Bhanji to Ben Kingsley in order to play Mohandas Gandhi! The entire experience of making Gandhi was beyond comparison. Forget spinning the charkha and doing yoga, it was serious business to get everything right the first time. I worked like a mad man on this film.
I held the most extraordinary conversations with Richard Attenborough. I rehearsed over and over again to get my speech and voice to the level where I could even remotely sound like the Mahatma himself. Gandhi was the noblest, most intelligent and benign character that I ever played.
'I decoded the Mahatma'
Dilip Prabhavalkar, Lage Raho...
I had doubts whether I will be accepted as Gandhi or not. And whether Gandhi will be accepted in Lage Raho Munnabhai. It was very challenging, difficult and a role of great calibre.
When I portray any character on screen, I do what I want to. But when I was playing the Father of the Nation, it was a very difficult and a responsible job. It had to be very restrained and controlled acting, taking into consideration the larger than life image, dignity and simplicity of Mahatma Gandhi. This was also an opportunity for me to decode him and understand his ideology, which I eventually did.
'It needed imagination, dedication'
Naseeruddin Shah, Hey Ram
Playing Gandhi needs a lot of imagination and dedication. The physical manner in which he presented himself and the way he spoke, everything has to be constantly kept in mind and worked on.
I understood his character because I am a father and a son. I could empathise with the character. I would not say that I have learned quite a bit about him after I played his role, but yes, I did work hard for this one. It is easier to play a fictional character, but very difficult to play a true-life character like him. Everyone knows what he was all about and if you go about depicting him in a wrong way, you get caught.
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