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
Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.
Certainly as actors, and maybe as directors, you've got to hang on to something childlike. You've got to know what play is. I haven't worked with Mike Leigh, but I know him very well and there's something open in his eyes about what's in front of him. And the same is true of Alfonso in a Mexican, mad way. There's an enthusiastic response to something. Neil Jordan, the same, when he gets excited . You just want to know there's a human being in there.
I was coming from a very cerebral, dark, difficult, layered play by Christopher Hampton and doing an action movie in Hollywood (Die Hard) with explosions, and I was holding a gun.
Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.
I think the thing about film is, as it gets proved by a lot of young filmmakers now, that the medium will just go on reinventing itself, and so you just hope to be a part of that and not a part of some kind of endless regurgitation or 'Here I am doing what you know I do' kind of thing.
I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.
A wounding tongue. I'm working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me.
From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other.
Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.
In theater, you've got to be aware of your whole body because it involves stamina. It involves two-and-a-half hours and a sustained release of energy, maybe for six months.
I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.
I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch.
I love working in New York theater.