Ben Kingsley to Receive Zurich Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Honor

British actor Sir Ben Kingsley will be honored with this year’s Golden Icon award for lifetime achievement at the 2022 Zurich International Film Festival (ZFF).

Kingsley will attend Zurich and present his latest film, Dalíland, in which he stars as the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. He will also speak about his career in a ZFF Masters class.

Kingsley’s performance as Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 period epic won him the Best Actor Oscar, and he has picked up three more Academy Award nominations: for Bugsy (1991), Sexy Beast (2000) and House of Sand and Fog (2003). His range and versatility as an actor have seen him play roles as varied as Itzhak Stern, Oskar Schindler’s bookkeeper in Schindler’s List (1993), to evil hacker Cosmo in 1992 thriller Sneakers, to fake baddie the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 (2013).

“Sir Ben Kingsley is an outstanding and highly versatile character actor who is not only completely absorbed in his roles, but is also able to imbue his characters with a rare human depth,” said Christian Jungen, ZFF Artistic Director. “With his nuanced acting, Kingsley has the ability to present the inner life of his characters to the outside world and to embody complex, fractured characters in a convincing and haunting way. A number of Kingsley’s films, including Gandhi and Schindler’s List, are among the most significant milestones in film history, making him, in turn, one of the most famous actors in the world.”

Kingsley accept the Golden Icon Award in person in Zurich on Sept. 22 and hold his ZFF Masters talk on Sept. 29.

“I’m a storyteller, nothing more and nothing less. So I’m touched that Zurich should see fit to honor me for this, my simple, ancient craft,” Kingsley said in a statement.

Kingsley will also present Mary Harron’s Dalíland, in which he stars as Salvador Dalí who, together with his new assistant, is busy preparing an important show in New York in 1973, while his tempestuous marriage to wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa) is on the verge of collapse.

The 18th Zurich Film Festival runs Sept 22-Oct 2.