How Ben Kingsley Changed Mahatma Gandhi’s Accent During ‘Gandhi’ Filming

Sir Ben Kingsley is one of the greats. It’s easy to see why Kingsley is worthy of his legend status, given his repertoire. The actor has starred in several movies and has played several characters, including real-life people. In 1982, he immortalized Mahatma Gandhi’s life and works by portraying him in his breakout role. Here’s how Ben Kingsley changed Gandhi’s accent during the filming of the movie.

‘Gandhi’ chronicled the life of Mahatma Gandhi

The 1982 film Gandhi follows the titular man starting in 1893 when his life changed. That year, a 23-year-old Gandhi was traveling on a South African train in first class when he got kicked off the compartment because he wasn’t white, despite having a first-class ticket. It was then that Gandhi realized that the laws in the country were biased against Indians and set out to ensure Indians had rights. He argued that Indians were British subjects and were, therefore, entitled to equal rights and privileges.

After a series of arrests and unwanted international attention, the government eventually decided to recognize some rights for Indians. Gandhi was subsequently invited back to India in 1915, where he was considered a national hero due to his human rights activism, eventually fighting for his country’s independence.

The protests he organized resulted in intense public pressure against Britain, and India finally won its independence. However, the country became divided due to religion, and although some people believed it best to divide the country between Muslims and Hindus, Gandhi still believed in a unified region. His attempts at peace eventually got him killed in 1948.

Ben Kingsley changed his accent to play Mahatma Gandhi

Wired recently sat down with a movie accent expert who helped the outlet break down actors playing real people. The expert, Erik Singer, is a dialect coach who analyzes how actors portray real people in movies.

Of Gandhi, Singer noted that Kingsley’s accent went hand in hand with Gandhi’s, whose accent continued to transition from mainly British to Indian the more he stayed in the country. “Gandhi’s accent actually changed throughout his life, and [Ben] Kingsley’s accent as Gandhi changes through the film. It goes from being much more British to sounding much more stereotypically Indian,” he said.

However, Singer clarified that the accent change from British to Indian wasn’t quite stereotypic but more of an accurate depiction. “One of the things that is a common feature for most Indian languages and Indian accented English are retroflex consonants.”

The dialect coach noted that the technique helped Kingsley transition into becoming Gandhi through his accent. “A retroflex means curling back, and the tongue is actually curling back and is flexing back, so retroflex,” he explained. He also played side-by-side comparisons to depict the realism of Kingsley’s accent compared to the real-life hero.

How Ben Kingsley landed the part in ‘Gandhi’

Kingsley explained to GQ that director Richard Attenborough invited him to lunch. He said, “The extraordinary coincidence is that I was reading an illustrated biography of Mahatma Gandhi the week he invited me to his house. So I was looking at photographs of this beautiful, great man, and then Attenborough called me and invited me to play him.”

After watching footage of Gandhi, Kingsley didn’t think he was up to the task and almost backed out, but Attenborough persisted. The movie was a critical and commercial success, and Kingsley won several awards for his performance.