Ben Kingsley explains who his ‘Sexy Beast’ character is based on
Throughout his career, Sir Ben Kingsley has delivered moments of genuine intensity, whether as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company or when portraying Mahatma Gandhi. However, it’s fair to say that his most rousing appearance came in Jonathan Glazer’s debut feature film Sexy Beast, in which Kingsley plays the fearsome Don Logan.
Logan is sent out to Spain to interrogate and practically Bully Ray Winstone’s retired criminal character, and what ensues is some of the most terrifying cinema of the 20th century. Logan is borderline psychotic and simply puts the fear of God, not only into Gal but into each audience member looking on.
Interestingly, of all the places for Kingsley to get his inspiration for playing Don Logan, it actually arrived from his maternal grandmother, of whom the actor had no nice things to say, once calling her “murderous and terrifying”, adjectives which can certainly be applied to his vicious performance in Jonathan Glazer’s debut.
In an interview with Ranker, Kingsley spoke of his grandmother, noting that she “was an extremely violent and unpleasant woman. She was racist, fascist, and antisemitic. When I play great heroic Jews and great heroic dark people, I’m sticking two fingers up at her. When I played Don Logan, I was channelling her.”
While Kingsley was certainly inspired by his familial relations when it came to his most terrifying performance, he also used his experience as a thespian on the Shakespearean stage to bring out the worst qualities of Logan, and when discussing the role, he admitted to finding parts of Othello’s Iago within the character.
“Beautiful writing, great director and a wonderful cast to work with,” Kingsley told GQ of his time making Sexy Beast. “Being a great lover of Shakespeare and having played Othello but not Iago, I did see that Don Logan was definitely Iago. His cry, his scream, was, ‘I love you, why don’t you love me?’ Another cry from the script is, ‘I don’t want you to be happy, why should I?'”
The British cinema icon added: “So my approach to him, in all humility and ration, was that Don was an abused child, unhealed, who would go on to scream for the rest of his adult life. Therefore, I had a compassionate link with him and understood his capacity for revenge and violence against a fate that had abused him as a child. So I got quite fond of Don.”
Check out Don Logan in action below.
