Alan Rickman Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mellow doesn't describe me. I'm hungry every day. — Alan Rickman

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

I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

I like it when stories are left open. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm a lot less serious than people think. — Alan Rickman

I love working in New York theater. — Alan Rickman

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. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ... — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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? — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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. — Alan Rickman

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

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! — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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! — Alan Rickman

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. — Alan Rickman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parts win prizes, not actors. — Alan Rickman

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

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

Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact. — Alan Rickman

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

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