From 'Gandhi' to 'Wonder Man,' Sir Ben Kingsley still sets the scene

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Would you be nervous if you needed to call Sir Ben Kingsley — always “Sir Ben,” you don’t trifle with the title — and convince him to be in your movie? You should be nervous.Destin Daniel Cretton would be the first to tell you that he was anxious when he dialed Kingsley at his London home to ask him if he might reprise the role of the washed-up, drug-addled actor Trevor Slattery, first seen in 2013’s “Iron Man 3.” Kingsley portrayed Slattery again the following year in a fun 14-minute short titled “All Hail the King,” which explored the character’s Shakespearean training and devoted relationship with his mother.

Cretton wanted Kingsley to play Slattery again in the 2021 Marvel movie, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” He had an elaborate pitch, which he painstakingly rehearsed and refined.But once Kingsley answered the phone, Cretton went off script and started gushing, telling Kingsley what an honor it was to even be talking with him.Kingsley cut him off.

“Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty,” Kingsley told him.And before Cretton could come back to his notes, Kingsley turned the tables and began grilling him.

“What do you know about Liverpool?” he asked, testing Cretton’s knowledge of Slattery’s hometown.“How far back do you go with British comedy?” Cretton started to answer the queries, but was then interrupted by another voice.

It was Trevor Slattery.More precisely, it was Kingsley performing Slattery, sounding like he was shouting from another room.

And he was angry, berating Kingsley for giving Cretton a hard time and proclaiming how much he wanted to be in this new movie.“Very quickly, I realized how much he loves this character,” Cretton says, by way of telling me that the next time he asked Kingsley to play Slattery, for the new Marvel TV series “Wonder Man,” the call was short and, of course, the answer was...