British actor Ben Kingsley this week makes his debut in a Bollywood film, nearly 30 years after his Oscar-winning performance in “Gandhi” catapulted him to worldwide fame. The 66-year-old plays a brilliant mathematician, Perci Trachtenberg, in the thriller “Teen Patti” (Three Cards) who meets a reclusive fellow academic, Venkat, at a London casino. Venkat (Amitabh Bachchan) tells him of a discovery he has made that he believes could redefine ideas about probability and tests his theory on a tour of Mumbai's illegal gambling dens. Director Leena Yadav's film has an all-star cast, including Irrfan Khan (“Slumdog Millionaire”, “A Mighty Heart”), Boman Irani and Tamil-language star R. Madhavan. Kingsley's role “is very crucial in the film and he is not playing a cameo,” said Yadav, who has described the movie as more about the risky decisions people make than actual gambling. Kingsley, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, is a household name in India because of his depiction of the country's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, which won him the Best Actor award in the 1982 Oscars. His huge body of work includes the Oscar-winning “Schindler's List.” Kingsley - born Krishna Bhanji to a British mother and Indian-origin father - has said his love for India is “as strong as ever”.
