Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman
Alan Sidney Patrick Rickmanwas an English actor and director known for playing a variety of roles on stage and screen. Rickman trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in modern and classical theatre productions. His first big television part came in 1982, but his big break was as the Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, for which he was nominated...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth21 February 1946
CityLondon, England
I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.
I'm a lot less serious than people think, it's probably because the way my face is put together.
I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.
The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.
I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.
That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.
If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.
I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.
One of the most, in a weird way, encouraging things a director can say to an actor - I know this as an actor - is when you ask them a question, they say, I don't know - 'cause it means there's some space there for you to find out. And it means that there's going to be a process.
Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.
I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.
You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.
I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.
I don't play villains, I play very interesting people