Alan rickman quotes

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

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

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!

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

My definition of palatable might be slightly different from yours.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

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

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

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

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

I love working in New York theater.

Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.

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

I'm a lot less serious than people think.

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

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.

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

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.

Parts win prizes, not actors.

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.

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

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

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

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

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

I am the character you are not supposed to like.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I like it when stories are left open.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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