Did You Know?
Mohandas K. Gandhi (played by Ben Kingsley) travels to London, he stays at Kingsley Hall. This is a historical coincidence, and not a cute reference by the filmmakers.
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300,000 extras appeared in the funeral sequence. About 200,000 were volunteers and 94,560 were paid a small fee (under contract). The sequence was filmed on 31st Jan 1981, the 33rd anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi's funeral. 11 crews shot over 20,000 feet of film, which was pared down to 125 seconds in the final release.
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Alec Guinness, Albert Finney, Peter Finch, Tom Courtney, 'Dirk Borgarde', and Anthony Hopkins were all originally considered for the role of Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim owned a share of the rights in Britain's longest-running play "The Mousetrap" which they sold to fund the production of this movie.
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John Hurt and Tom Courtenay were among the actors approached by Richard Attenborough about playing the lead role. Ben Kingsley was recommended for the role by Harold Pinter, who had seen him in a play; Pinter made the suggestion to Sam Spiegel, an associate of Attenborough's.
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Ben Kingsley's (born Krishna Bhanji) paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Mohandas K. Gandhi was from.
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It was Michael Attenborough, Richard Attenborough's son, who recommended Ben Kingsley to his father.
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Richard Attenborough first offered Candice Bergen her cameo role in 1966 while they were filming The Sand Pebbles.
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For the funeral scene, advertisements calling for 400,000 extras were either distributed in pamphlets and by newspapers in Delhi. Extras were not allowed to wear anything other than white and as part of security measures, turnstiles were built at selected entry points for crowd control. The crew bought any clothing that was not white.
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No studio was interested in financing the film. Richard Attenborough cited that most of the financing were solicited from: 1. Joseph E. Levine whom agreed to finance in exchange of Attenborough directing A Bridge Too Far and Magic. 2. The sale of the ownership share of "The Mousetrap". 3. Jake Eberts, a friend of Attenborough. The remaining of the money were solicited from major companies in England minus the BBC.
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Last English-language cinema film of Dominic Guard. He has since had a long career in British television and a cameo in the French film L'homme qui a perdu son ombre.
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Dustin Hoffman had expressed an early desire to play the title role in Gandhi, but was offered Tootsie the same year and ended up taking the latter role. He eventually lost the Oscar that year to Ben Kingsley who played Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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Features Bernard Hill in a small role. Hill would go on to appear in a Best Picture Oscar winner for each of the following decades: Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
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Richard Attenborough won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for this film, even though he had expected, and hoped, that Steven Spielberg would win for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Attenborough would later work with Spielberg in Jurassic Park, while Ben Kingsley appeared later that same year in Schindler's List, which finally won Spielberg the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars.
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