Alan Rickman Quotes

If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.

I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.

England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.

The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they've got the guts to say, 'I don't know.'

I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.

I am hellbent on defying your expectations, at every turn, and even if you don't like what's being done, I dare you to find it uninteresting.

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.

All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.

When I am asked about influences, I always say I bow down to Fred Astaire, because when you look at him dancing you never look at his extremities, do you? You look at his centre. What you never see is the hours of work that went into the routines, you just see the breathtaking spirit and freedom.

One thing I will say - my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It's an inverse equation, if that's the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.

I've learned, having been on a lot of sets, the good news is that by definition you are surrounded by experts. They get fired if they're not - unlike in the theatre!

The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.

I'm a lot less serious than people think.

Give me a window and I'll stare out it.

I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.

On film you put all your energies into a single glance.

I don't play villains, I play very interesting people

Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'

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 never talk about 'Harry Potter' because I think that would rob children of something that's private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it.

My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.

I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience.

If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.

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 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.

I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other.

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.

Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.

There's, like, marks next to an actor's name or something, and boy does that go up and down! Somewhere in there, which always causes my mate Miss Ruby Wax great hilarity, I was offered a biopic of Frank Sinatra. Even I knew that was a bad idea! They'll throw anything at you at certain times. So, you know, to thine own self be true.

I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

I've never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.

Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.

If you judge the character, you cant play it.

Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.

That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

A wounding tongue. I'm working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me.

I approach every part I'm asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn't get it, or if he does?

Talent is an accident of genes, and a responsibility.

You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.

Snow Cake is a lovely film. Really proud of that. We shot it in 21 days. I thought Sigourney was amazing in it. And very, very accurate. I think there was some element that thought she had pushed it too far. But not at all when you do the amount of homework she had done and spent the amount of time she did with adult autistics. She was right on the money. And I think Marc Evans is a terrific director. He's a sweet, open, honest man and a really good director of actors.

When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter.

It's a human need to be told stories. The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.

If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.

Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city.

Do you know that moment when you paint a landscape as a child and, when you're maybe under seven or something, the sky is just a blue stripe across the top of the paper? And then there's that somewhat disappointing moment when the teacher tells you that the sky actually comes down in amongst all the branches. And it's like life changes at that moment and becomes much more complicated and a little bit more boring, as it's rather tedious to fill in the branches ...

My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.

Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.

On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes.

Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.

The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda.

Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch.

Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we're in deep trouble.

I am the character you are not supposed to like.

Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.

It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.

I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.

We're dead as a species if we don't tell stories, because then we don't know who we are.

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.

Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There's a great deal of wonderful energy there. They say 'yes' to things; not like the endless 'nos' and 'hrrumphs' you get in England!

I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.

So you can't judge the character you're playing ever.

I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

I was a student in London in the '70s, so CBGB really wasn't on my radar at all. Obviously, I was aware of the emergence of the Police in England and as an art student, I was very aware of David Byrne, but I suppose my musical taste at that time certainly didn't stretch towards the Dead Boys or the Ramones.

I love perfumes. Every morning when my girlfriend and I come down to the courtyard in our block of flats we're assailed by the most delicious scent - jasmine round a doorway. It almost makes me swoon.

It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it.

I never expected to have any kind of film career, to be honest. It was all a bit of a surprise. But I was in a big hit play on Broadway. America, as many people will say, says yes more often than we do. And so I was suddenly surrounded by people saying yes. But I was aware that was 'cause of what I was in. It had a big impact.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognizes something about themselves or they don't
You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking that was nice ... now where's the cab?'

The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible. Or, what's impossible? What's a fantasy?

With the best intentions, the job of acting can become a display of accumulated bad habits, trapped instincts and blocked energies. Working with the Alexander Technique has given me sightings of another way ... Mind and body, work and life together. Real imaginative freedom ...

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.

There's a voice inside you that tells you what you should do.