‘Joseph’ Takes the Shine Off Saint Kingsley

Ben Kingsley is an icon in India because of his stunning, Oscar-winning portrayal of the country’s beloved leader Mahatma Gandhi.

But being a hero does have a downside. The British actor of Indian descent has discovered since making “Gandhi” 13 years ago that Indians don’t want him to play the bad guy.

“The trouble is I am not the icon,” Kingsley explains. “I am the person who made the icon. They get that confused. Other people get confused--not just Indians. I made that icon and now I should only make (other) icons of beautiful saints.”

Kingsley, whose latest role is as a sinner in TNT’s four-hour religious drama “Joseph,” recalls being embroiled in a “heated debate” with a woman on the subject. “She said, ‘You should only be playing good guys. You wouldn’t play a bad guy would you?’ I had a very strong reaction to that. I said, ‘You are robbing me of my freedom as an actor. You are telling me that I can only play Hamlet and Timon of Athens, but not allowed to play Richard the III or Macbeth?’ ”

Despite the admonishments of his admirers, Kingsley has managed to play a vast array of saints and sinners since “Gandhi”--from mobster Meyer Lansky in “Bugsy” to the soulful Jewish accountant Stern in “Schindler’s List” to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story” to a South American doctor who may have tortured a political prisoner in “Death and the Maiden.”

“Joseph,” which premieres Sunday, stars Paul Mercurio as the eleventh son of Jacob who was abandoned in an Eygptian well by his jealous brothers and then sold into slavery. Kingsley plays Potiphar, the powerful chief steward of the Pharaoh’s court who recognizes the brilliance of his Jewish slave and befriends the young man, who becomes a high official in Egypt.

An international co-production with Italy and Germany, “Joseph” also stars Oscar winner Martin Landau as Jacob and Lesley Ann Warren as Potiphar’s kittenish wife. Roger Young (TNT’s “Geronimo”) directed Lionel Chetwynd’s script.

“It is marvelous to play this narcissistic anti-Semite in ‘Joseph’ and the banal and ordinary face of the torturer in ‘Death and the Maiden,’ ” the eloquent actor explains over breakfast in his lush Pasadena hotel suite.

Kingsley, whose brown eyes are extraordinarily expressive during the interview, chooses a role in the context of the role he has just completed. “For example, there are roles that I passed on that were really quite good, but I passed on them because I know I just have done that last week, so why should I do it again this week?

“I can not make moral choices,” he adds. “Moral in terms of serving a set morality, therefore only playing people I feel are of moral integrity. I have to play the murderers, I have to play the fascist. I have to play the soldiers.”

And he had to play Potiphar because the character embodied the closest thing “you can probably get in ancient Egypt to absolute power. He was the chief executive of the god King’s world and that was attractive about the role to me. Not that fact that it is the Old Testament, not the fact that it was the Bible. That must always be secondary. The fact that I can present to an audience something in its pure form, like I attempted to do in ‘Death and the Maiden,’ as I attempted to in ‘Joseph,’ and how I will have attempted to do in ‘Species,’ which will come out in June.”

Potiphar, he says, wouldn’t survive very long as a slave. “If somebody whipped him he would grab the whip and strangle him,” Kingsley says matter-of-factly. “He is much too arrogant and enraged and narcissistic to be a good slave. But at the same time he is intelligent enough to be open to influence by that of which he initially disparages, despises and ridicules, a Jew. So having been fascinated by 20th-Century history and European anti-Semitism for a long time as a phenomena, it was very interesting to explore its counterpart in ancient Egypt and to be the man in the trench coat and uniform, to be the man with the baton, to be the man with absolute power, to be the man who ran the city state and the camps, building sites and everything.”

The end result of taking on the overlord role was very energizing for the actor who played the sympathetic victim-hero in “Schindler’s List” and a victim of another sort in “Death and the Maiden.”

Kingsley also has just signed to play Moses in TNT’s next Old Testament adaptation. “I had a lot of energy to give to that area because so much energy had been taken from me doing the other roles. And it didn’t surprise me. It confirmed a suspicion that I had that if I push one way, it will feel great to push the other way. ‘Species’ is sort of an extension of ‘Joseph’ in that the character does have absolute power as well. He’s a scientist and he creates life,” he says about the fictional thriller directed by Roger Donaldson.

Kingsley sips his tea. “It’s what swing of the pendulum as an actor will give me the most energy. I found that Joseph did give me a huge amount of energy. I felt very good and enjoyed it. To be the man who listens to the Jews, to be the man who is impressed by the Jew, the man who is influenced by the Jew, it was almost like I was Oskar Schindler and Paul Mercurio was my Stern because there is a real collaboration (between the two) and Paul becomes my accountant.”

The actor pauses for a moment. “It’s very odd actually,” he says slowly. “I just realized this. It is like a reversal. Joseph runs my estate just as Stern ran the business for Oskar Schindler.”

Kingsley has no complaints about filming “Joseph” last fall in the heat and dust of Morocco. “There is a part of me being part Indian, part English that when I get east of a certain point on the map, part of me comes completely alive and very enlightened,” he explains with a smile. “I was very happy when I wasn’t filming to wander around in my sandals and just feel completely at home.

, completely at home with the heat and the olive trees and the fruit trees and the big terra-cotta walls and to listen to great music. It is a simple body response.”

He was gratified and amazed at the worldwide response “Schindler’s List” received. The actor says he knew Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film was a “masterpiece” during production in Poland two years ago.

“Where I think we were deeply gratified was the scale on which the public is willing to grieve,” he explains. “That’s a great and wonderful surprise because I am tired of people fiddling around with the endings of films and pontificating in their offices saying, ‘Audiences don’t want this.’ ”

Grieving, Kingsley says, is extremely healthy and healing. “I know a woman who pays a lot of money to go to the opera to have a good cry because she feels great afterward. If we dam up this natural function and make sure that nobody cries, we are heading to big trouble. Big trouble. It has outlets in all sorts of unhealthy areas.”

The cinema at its best, he adds, “alongside the church at its best, is where the human soul is open and all the joy and the grief is accessible to you.”

Part I of “Joseph” airs Sunday at 5, 7 and 9 p.m. on TNT; Part II airs Monday at 5, 7 and 9 p.m. Both parts repeat April 23 beginning at 8 a.m. , April 25 at 5 p.m. and April 30 at noon.