Alan Rickman famous quotes

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…
-- Alan Rickman

#Teacher #Children #Life Changing

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Mean #Space #Directors

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

#Able #Indecision #Plans

The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.
-- Alan Rickman

#Simple #Differences #Directors

When I'm 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, 'After all this time?' And I will say, 'Always.
-- Alan Rickman

#Reading #Years #Sitting

Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.
-- Alan Rickman

#Responsibility #Acting #Talent

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

#Interesting #Acting #Process

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.
-- Alan Rickman

#Theatre #Acting #Nerves

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

#Two #England #Inches

I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.
-- Alan Rickman

#America #Political #Parks

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

#Art #Littles #Robust

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Children #Hate #Thinking

I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.
-- Alan Rickman

#Laughter #Laughing #Way

It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking #Would Be #Wonderful

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.
-- Alan Rickman

#Book #Differences #Making A Difference

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

#Voice #Should

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

#Thinking #Discipline #Connections

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

#House #Suits #Trampolines

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Dancing #Looks #Bows

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking #Doors #Pie

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

#Thinking #Play #Remember

I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.
-- Alan Rickman

#Writing #Character #Journey

I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.
-- Alan Rickman

#Agents #Very Good #Turns

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

#Lasts #Spokes #Microphones

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.
-- Alan Rickman

#Supportive #Actors

Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There's a great deal of wonderful energy there.
-- Alan Rickman

#Energy #Towns #Wonderful

I have this feeling that if I could sort out what's on my dining room table, everything would fall into place.
-- Alan Rickman

#Fall #Feelings #Dining

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Expectations #Done #Defying

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

#Film #Made #Force

Acting is about giving something away, handing yourself over to whatever role you are asked to play. I'm not hiding or escaping or seeking anonymity. I reserve the right not to have a rubber stamp on my forehead saying this is who I am. Because who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.
-- Alan Rickman

#Escaping #Who I Am #Play

My definition of palatable might be slightly different from yours.
-- Alan Rickman

#Wine #Different #Definitions

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#New York #Years #Dancing

If you judge the character, you cant play it.
-- Alan Rickman

#Character #Play #Judging

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

#Home #Edinburgh #Way

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

#Who I Am #People #Want

I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking #Actors #Nervous

I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking

I am the character you are not supposed to like.
-- Alan Rickman

#Character

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

#Needs #Stories #Thanks

I'm still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there's half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.
-- Alan Rickman

#Live Life #Home #Yogurt

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

#Swim #Desire #Want

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.
-- Alan Rickman

#Mean #Energy #Different

I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.
-- Alan Rickman

#Hate #White #Love Hate

And 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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Destiny #Where We Come #Needs

I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.
-- Alan Rickman

#Real #Thinking #Worry

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

#Misfits #Appeals #Maverick

Parts win prizes, not actors.
-- Alan Rickman

#Winning #Actors #Prize

A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, 'I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.' Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.
-- Alan Rickman

#Hate #Thinking #Scary

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Children #Book #Phones

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

#England #Said #Exciting

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Character #Play #Judging

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

#Character #Play #Together

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Jobs #Two #Together

Acting is mostly about listening. If you just focus in on what the other person is saying, acting takes care of itself to quite a large extent.
-- Alan Rickman

#Focus #Listening #Theatre

I don't play villains, I play very interesting people
-- Alan Rickman

#Play #People #Interesting

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

#Long

What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.
-- Alan Rickman

#Talking #Bored #Actors

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.
-- Alan Rickman

#Imagination #Directors

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

#Thinking #Careers #Actors

I'm a lot less serious than people think, it's probably because the way my face is put together.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking #People #Together

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

#Who I Am #Play #People

The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.
-- Alan Rickman

#Stories #Ends #Middle

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

#Lines #Forget You #Gremlins

I love working in New York theater.
-- Alan Rickman

#New York #Theater

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

#Mind #Actors #Serious

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

#Watches #Nightmare #Film

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

#Character #Judging

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

#Giving #Window #Staring

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

#Tongue #Celts

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?'
-- Alan Rickman

#Nice #Lying #Thinking

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

#Real #Ideas #Magic

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

#Energy #Film #Glances

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Moving #Writing #Play

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Jobs #Home #Feet

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?
-- Alan Rickman

#Doe #Want #Angle

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#People #Groups #Actors

You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.
-- Alan Rickman

#Interesting #Challenges #Trying

You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else.
-- Alan Rickman

#London #Sometimes #Forget

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.'
-- Alan Rickman

#Directors #Guts

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

#Should #Feels #Response

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

#Wicked #Witch #Casts

Originally, theater was my life. It was what I assumed I'd spend my working life doing - if I was lucky. Then along came movies.
-- Alan Rickman

#Lucky #Theater

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.
-- Alan Rickman

#Travel #Journey #Giving

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Girlfriend #Morning #Block

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Thinking #Goes On #Kind

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

#Parent #Kind #Theater

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

#Cameras #Feels #Audience

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

#Listening #Actors #Want

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

#Kitchen #Orphan #Scrap

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Careers #Might #Brilliant

Why don't I like you?" "Because you think I'm an asshole, and I'm not really, I'm just British and, well, you're not.
-- Alan Rickman

#I Like You #Thinking #British

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#New York #Eight #Rocks

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.'
-- Alan Rickman

#Teenager #People #Quests

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Two #Energy #Half

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Animal #Acting #Kind

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.
-- Alan Rickman

#Art #Boys #Cbgb

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

#Talking #Topics #Los Angeles