Actors are often asked to name their dream directors. With the slightest smile, Sir Ben Kingsley gives his standard reply: "I haven't met them yet."

Case in point: Fifty Dead Men Walking, the gritty real-life story of Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess), an ex-IRA member who worked as a mole for British Intelligence through the '80s after becoming disillusioned with his mates' increasing violence. Kingsley plays Fergus, his police go-between and father figure

It's the work of Canadian director Kari Skogland, whom Kingsley admits he'd never heard of.

"I didn't know anything about director Isabel Coixet before I did (the adaptation of the Philip Roth novel) Elegy with Penelope Cruz. It was a wonderful discovery to get to know her, but I didn't have an aspiration to work for her because I was ignorant that she was there in the first place. I was ignorant that Jonathan Glazer, who did Sexy Beast, was there in the first place.

"And I was not aware of Kari until I met her on this film. There are wonderful people I have yet to discover. I love discovering things with them."

His discovery came via "a phone call from my agent. Then Kari came to Vancouver whilst I was working on Elegy. So I was already working with a female director in Canada (Skogland and Coixet are the only two female directors he's ever worked for)."

What impressed him, Kingsley says, was the outsider's perspective a Canadian director brought to the Irish "troubles." (For research, Skogland lived in Belfast for several months and met with former IRA volunteers and Royal Ulster Constabulary officers.)

"It can be a real bonus to have that outside perspective," Kingsley says. "You recognize patterns of human behaviour that you wouldn't recognize from the inside. I have worked with directors -- for example, Spielberg from the United States filming the Krakow ghetto (in Schindler's List). Richard Attenborough goes to India (in Gandhi) and films India brilliantly. So I have worked with chaps who have this outside perspective, and it can be very enriching. They don't know what they can't do."

His own exposure to Northern Ireland of that period came in 1989, when "Belfast was courageous enough to have a film festival. I remember it being a city under siege, from within and without. Everything was barricaded, and you couldn't go to a screening or public event without being in a metal cage in your armoured vehicle. They check your papers, a steel door opens. It was a very tense situation."

The key dynamic in Fifty Dead Men Walking is McGartland's disillusionment balanced against Fergus' own realization that his superiors consider their "touts" (moles) to be mere pawns, to be sacrificed at will.

"I think I based him on somebody I never met. But I remember an actor telling me about his brother who was a policeman in the Yorkshire police force. And he told me stories about him, and I was very intrigued. And then Fergus came along and I said, 'My God, I think it's the same guy!' "

Thus are McGartland and Fergus (a composite character) drawn closer together by their mutual dilemmas and peril (McGartland was "outed" in '91 and has lived under assumed identities in numerous places, including Canada). It gave Kingsley an opportunity to work closely with a young actor, something he says he welcomes.

"Young actors are so brave, 21st Century in the best sense," he says. "And I love to be around that energy, that urge to tell a story."

More Artists