Alan Rickman Quotes

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.

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.

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

I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.

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.

I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word [...] - a jouuuuuurney.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?'

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

If you judge the character, you cant play it.

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.'

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

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

I love working in New York theater.

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 think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.

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?

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

Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I'm a lot less serious than people think.

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.

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

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.

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