It is less than 12 months since the 64-year-old star was back in headlines over his steamy on-screen kiss with former child star Mary-Kate Olsen, who at 21 is young enough to be his grand-daughter.

"It's only a tiny part of the film," he insists, though he cannot conceal his glee that the publicity has brought what might have ended up just an indy film about drug addition to a much wider audience.

The Whackness – in which Sir Ben played a psychiatrist abusing the trust of his patient, Olsen – was set against a background of dope-dealing and hiphop in 1990s New York.

One of his next ports of call is Tudor England to take on the role of The Bard in his own screen adaptation of a best-selling historical novel featuring Shakespeare on his deathbed. But more of that later.

Had fate taken a different course, Sir Ben would never been famous at all. He might very well have ended up writing prescriptions and doling out pills as a GP like his father.

Growing up the son of a Scarborough doctor, it was naturally assumed by his family that Ben and his brother would follow their father into a respectable career in medicine.

It was a trip to the cinema when he was four, after his father had moved to a practice in Salford, that convinced the future Gandhi star that a different destiny awaited him.

The film showing was 1951's Never Take No for an Answer – an Anglo-Italian production, based on the Paul Gallico story The Small Miracle, about a young Italian orphan boy, Pipino, taking his pet donkey to the Vatican to be blessed.

Ben had a striking resemblance to Pipino, played by an Italian boy of roughly his age. It was not just he who noticed the similarity but also the cinema owner. "He held me above the crowd saying: 'It's Pipino. It's Pipino." I thought: 'This just seems right."

Kingsley, whose birth name was Krishna Bhanji, was born in a small cottage, called Orchard Cottage, in Snainton, near Scarborough, to an actress mother Anna Lyna Mary (née Goodman), who was also a model, and Dr Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji – or Ben to his family.

Sir Ben's father, the son of a Kenyan spice trader, had moved to England when he was 14 and later married Anna, whose parents were also immigrants working in the London rag trade.

Although the internet will tell you different, Sir Ben insists he never went to university – which was why he felt "doubly blessed" to be back in Yorkshire picking up an honourary degree from the Scarborough campus of Hull University. He is also due to pick up a similar honour at Sussex University.

He said: "I joined an amateur dramatic society after school in Salford. I auditioned for a professional company, got the part and have never stopped working since."

Although he found work in both film and TV – appearing for the first time in a supporting role in Fear Is The Key in 1972, and a stint in Coronation Street during the 1960s as Ron Jenkins – it was his Oscar winning turn in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi in 1982 that made him a star.

So captivating was his performance that cinema sales of crisps are said to have dropped because patrons were too embarrassed to crunch them in the spell-bound auditorium.

Standing on Scarborough seafront capped and gowned, Sir Ben said his memories of the film was still "vivid". He continued: "Because it's shown so much in schools and colleges it is never perceived as an old film."

It also led to a lifetime friendship with Sir Richard Attenborough who will be presenting him with his second honourary degree within a month at Sussex University.

Gandhi had been one of the most coveted film roles in years and Sir Richard's choice of Kingsley – who had been eking out a living as a defence barrister in the long-running Crown Court lunchtime drama series – had come out of the blue. But he has hardly been off screen since.

Although he may never quite lay the ghost of Gandhi, Oscar nominations and critical accolades have come thick and fast, including for his roles in Schindler's List and Sexy Beast, for which he was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.

He also raised eyebrows by playing himself in an episode of the acclaimed US gangster series The Sopranos.

Sir Ben found only the highest production values. "It is a very good team. It runs like a Ferrari. They know that show and its characters most intimately."

Knighted in the 2001 New Year's Honours list, he has never forgotten where he came from. He said: "My father shared a practice in Scarborough and was a junior partner in that practice.

"We rented a small cottage in Snainton where I was born. I left when I was two – dad became a GP in Salford. But I am a Yorkshire tot by birth. My father expected me to follow him into medicine.

"It was the received vision that me and my brother would be doctors. But I was the song and dance man of the family – a born story-teller. I liked to entertain people in my classroom and was sometimes thrown out as a disturbing influence. But I loved to tell stories and make people laugh."

Sir Ben's journey home was always going to be one of re-discovery. But he got more than he bargained for when he revisited his former home at Snainton the day before his "graduation".

Snainton lies on the same seam of limestone – charted by Scarborough's father of geology William Smith – running through Britain as the village in Oxfordshire where Sir Ben now lives.

Going back to Snainton was not the shock he had anticipated but "a gradual act of recognition" as it dawned on him how alike his present and birth home were.

He said: "I recognised the landscape and layout of the village. It is strangely related to where I live now in Oxfordshire. I thought: 'You are living in village similar to the one where you were born'."

On New Year's Eve he will be celebrating his 65th birthday. But he shows no signs of slowing down. His bags are already packed for Morocco to start filming The Prince of Persia. With that and other commitments, he does not reckon he will get a break until around 2011.

He is also very excited about his upcoming roll as Shakespeare in Will, based on Christopher Rush's highly regarded historical novel about a deathbed meeting between the Bard and his lawyer, as they discuss his final will and testament

He said: "I brought the rights to the wonderful book by Christopher Rush and my company SBK Pictures is going to produce it. I will be playing the man himself – and that does make me nervous."