The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum welcomed Sir Ben Kingsley earlier this week to discuss “The Power of Film and the Holocaust.” While Kingsley has embraced a variety of memorable roles in the over 60 films of his career — like Gandhi, for which he won an Best Actor Oscar in 1982 — some of his most memorable and poignant characters were in films about the Holocaust. He played Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List, Simon Wiesenthal in Murderers Among Us and Otto Frank in the TV miniseries Anne Frank: The Whole Story.

Throughout the talk Tuesday, Kingsley revealed his love for and skill at telling a story. He let the audience into his process as an actor, and expressed how seriously he takes his job representing the real people he portrays. Arnold Schwartzman, director of the Oscar winning documentary Genocide and the 1994 film Liberation (which he recruited Kingsley for), kicked off the event Tuesday night, noting his and Kingsley’s experiences with Holocaust films and directing attention to the screen and for the first clip of the evening. It was from Schindler’s List, a scene where Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) and Itzhak Stern (Kingsley), are speaking quietly together, considering the future. Schindler says, “Someday this is all going to end, you know. I was going to say we’ll have a drink then.” To which Stern replies, articulating what is in the audience’s minds, “I think I’d better have it now.”

And with that, Kingsley took the stage, sitting down with Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition, for an evening of stories.