Knighthood healed family wounds, says Ben Kingsley

London: Veteran actor Ben Kingsley has credited his knighthood with finally filling an emotional `vacuum` left by his cold and distant parents.

The 60-year-old `Gandhi` star said that his family was far from close and insists his mother, a model and actress, was even envious of his success, reported Telegraph online. Kingsley threw himself into acting to escape his upbringing and is convinced that his personal pain only began to heal when he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002. "They never praised me or acknowledged a gram of talent in me at all... My mother, far from being proud, was very jealous of my success. "Any kind of embrace (from my parents) was totally absent from my life so to be embraced by Her Majesty... I felt like stopping people in the street, saying my mum loves me, you know. Because that`s what it felt like, to me. The filling of a vacuum in the universe," Kingsley said. PTI