AND OTTO MAKES THREE

Playing Anne Frank's father, Ben Kingsley
continues in a string of Holocaust-themed roles.

imagine," she says during a break in
filming.
While Gordon's remarkable resem-
blance to Anne was the first thing that
grabbed producer David Kappes and
executive producer Hanns Proppe dur-
ing the casting process, her personality
and acting skills quickly impressed the
cast and crew.
Kingsley is among those praising her
talents.
"She is the best leading lady I have
ever had. She is intelligence on legs,"
he says. "Ninety percent of what I do
is reacting to her. I just hold her hand
and play her dad and allow my charac-
ter to love her character. "
For Gordon, who is not Jewish,
playing the role is about being herself
— and she repeatedly refers to the
character in the present tense.
"I think I'm really like her. That's
why I love playing this part. Anne is
really bubbly and bright — I'm quite
like that," Gordon says. "I love dream-
ing and making up little stories. But
she could also be really deep and
intense — I can just imagine her in a
corner scribbling really fast.
"I think the people in the annex sur-
vived the confinement because of her;
she kept them going," she says.
Although Gordon knew about
Anne, it was not until she won the
role that she read her diary closely.
"I had browsed through the diary
before, but several months [before
shooting the miniseries] I was given a
copy, and as I read it properly I started
to know Anne better and understand
her thoughts," she says.
"During her confinement in the
annex, her style of writing becomes
really impressive," Gordon says. "I
hadn't previously understood that at
the beginning of the diary she was just
a child."
Gordon made a big impression on
her fellow cast and crew, but Anne
obviously has left a lasting impression
on Gordon as well.
Gordon kept a diary about playing
Anne, and plans to turn it into a script
when she has time.
Even the prospect of having her hair

BEYOND THE ATTIC on page 78

NAOMI PFEFFERIvIAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

A

ctor Ben Kingsley was glower-
ing.
He'd been asked to comment on
the critics who suggest there are cur-
rently too many Holocaust films.
"How dare they" he hissed, his
brown eyes glinting angrily "If peo-
ple want to ignore history', they are
only digging their own graves."
The British actor (Death and the
Maiden, Bugsy) had reason to be
testy. While best known for his 1982
Oscar winning turn in Gandhi, he
also has played three of the most
famous survivors ever to be portrayed
on screen: Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal in HBO's Murderers
Among Us, soulful accountant Itzhak
Stern in Schindler's List and Anne
Frank's father, Otto, in the upcom-
ing ABC miniseries Anne Frank.
During a recent interview, a gaunt
Kingsley was "still recovering" from
the Frank shoot. "It was sternum
piercing stuff," he confided.
"Whenever I turned a corner and
saw armored trucks and SS officers,
my stomach turned to ice."
But the movie felt serendipitous
for the actor. It was Anne Frank,
after all, who helped him survive the
worst days on his two previous
Holocaust films. When he suffered
intense bouts of crying on the
Murderers set, he gazed at a photo-
graph of Anne.
"I also kept a picture of her on my
person throughout most of the film-
ing of Schindier's List," he revealed. "I
would glance at it when I was
required to do a sequence that was
particularly demanding. Just to say,
`I'm doing it for you, darling.' Then I
would put it back in my pocket and
do the scene.
"The mind rejects the number six
million," Kingsley added. "But when
you focus on one face, you begin to
comprehend the horror."
Kingsley, nee Krishna Bhanji, is the
son of an Indian physician and a
half-Russian Jewish fashion model
who was born illegitimate and was
loathe to speak of her parentage. The
actor did not learn of the Shoah until
he saw a Holocaust-themed docu-
mentary that placed him in a state of
"deep, physical shock," he said.

-

Kingsley was only 9, but he knew
that someday he "wanted to help
articulate that chorus of pain."
During his childhood, he never
suspected that opportunity would
come via Hollywood. In fact,
Kingsley didn't pursue the theater
until he failed his medical school
entrance exams. He was a far better
student as an actor. To play Gandhi,
he fasted, practiced yoga, adopted a
vegetarian diet and mastered the
spinning wheel.
When Simon Wiesenthal unexpect-
edly telephoned about Murderers in
the late 1980s, Kingsley's research
was again meticulous. The actor
spent days with the Nazi hunter in
Vienna (the two men share the same

parallel between ancient and modern
anti-Semitism. His understanding of
shtetl oppression influenced his Oscar-
nominated performance as Jewish
gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugry.
When the call came to play Otto
Frank last year, the actor was reluc-
tant. He was tired of playing victims.
"But I carefully read the script and
saw that the Franks were presented as
a very cultured, successful middle
class family — not victims by any
stretch of the imagination," he said.
"It is clear that they became victims.
That is an important distinction."
Kingsley, busied himself by watch-
ing BBC tapes of Otto Frank. But
one obstacle remained: the controver-
sy plaguing the ABC miniseries,

Anne (Hannah Taylor Gordon) cringes while she and her father (Ben Kingsley)
watch newsreel footage of the Nazi assault.

birthday, Dec. 31), plastered his bed-
room with photographs of the Shoah
and dieted to appear emaciated for
concentration camp scenes.
By the time director Steven
Spielberg approached him about
Schindler's List, the Holocaust was
familiar turf for Kingsley.
Nevertheless, he felt as if he were
donning the skin of a corpse when he
put on his stained overcoat costume
with its yellow star each morning.
When a Pole made a threatening,
anti-Semitic gesture to a fellow actor,
Kingsley lunged at the man. "When I
left Krakow, I felt like a refugee,
because that kind of work displaces
the psyche," he said.
Yet the Shoah continued to influ-
ence the roles he felt compelled to
accept. Kingsley starred in the TNT
films Moses and Joseph to implore the

based on Melissa Muller's 1998 biog-
raphy of Anne.
The book and the miniseries refer
to five pages Otto censored from the
published diary (they criticize the
Franks' strained marriage); when
Spielberg withdrew from the project
over the conflict, there was concern
that Kingsley might follow suit.
However, the two men met at a din-
ner, Kingsley told the Los Angeles
Times, and Spielberg "gave me a big
hug and said, 'I'm so glad you're play-
ing Otto.'"
But don't suggest to Kingsley that
he is typecast in roles that are serious
and angst-ridden. "My next film,
Beast, is a black comedy in
which I play possibly the most vio-
lent man on the planet," he insisted.
"It's going to completely wipe the
slate clean."

5/18
2001

77