Of all the remarkable roles in Ben Kingsley’s career that could have inspired his performance as surrealist Salvador Dalí in “Dalíland,” from “Gandhi” to “Sexy Beast” to “House of Sand and Fog,” it was his role as “Trevor Slattery” — better known as “The Mandarin” — in “Iron Man 3” that made the director and writer realize he could pull it off.
Speaking with TheWrap at the Toronto International Film Festival on behalf of “Dalíland,” the festival’s closing night film, director Mary Harron (“American Psycho”) and writer John Walsh said that the real Dalí was something of a “tremendous coward.”