Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller are Salvador Dalí in the DalíLand trailer
American Psycho director Mary Harron's latest project examines Salvador Dalí's life and career in 1974 New York City
Sir Ben Kingsley stars as Salvador Dalí in the upcoming film DalíLand. Director Mary Harron may be best known for helming American Psycho, but she is no stranger to depicting historical figures, having also made I Shot Andy Warhol and the Charles Manson film Charlie Says.
“I had such a powerful image of Sir Ben in Sexy Beast I thought he might be too overwhelming,” Harron says in a press release. “Dalí had the power of a genius but he was also a coward. As absurd as it sounds, I happened to see Sir Ben in Iron Man 3 where he plays the double role of a frightening terrorist and a sniveling, hilarious coward, and it became clear to me that an actor like Sir Ben can do anything. He’s universal in his reach and he’s also a great comic actor, which wouldn’t seem obvious from roles like Gandhi.”
However, DalíLand is not a straightforward biopic of the Spanish surrealist. It is primarily focused on a brief window of time in 1974 when the artist and his wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa) lived in New York, and its other central character James (Christopher Briney) is an original creation, an audience surrogate stepping into Dalí’s world.