Top 100 Alan Rickman Quotes
#1. I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
Alan Rickman
#2. I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am.
Alan Rickman
#3. We're dead as a species if we don't tell stories, because then we don't know who we are.
Alan Rickman
#4. 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
#5. I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.
Alan Rickman
#6. I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.
Alan Rickman
#7. It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it.
Alan Rickman
#8. I've never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.
Alan Rickman
#9. 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
#10. On film you put all your energies into a single glance.
Alan Rickman
#11. The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.
Alan Rickman
#12. 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
#13. I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.
Alan Rickman
#14. All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.
Alan Rickman
#15. I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.
Alan Rickman
#16. You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else.
Alan Rickman
#17. I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.
Alan Rickman
#19. 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
#20. England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.
Alan Rickman
#22. You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.
Alan Rickman
#23. So you can't judge the character you're playing ever.
Alan Rickman
#24. I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.
Alan Rickman
#25. My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.
Alan Rickman
#26. Actors are actually very supportive of each other.
Alan Rickman
#27. 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
#28. Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.
Alan Rickman
#29. Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.
Alan Rickman
#30. 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
#31. Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.
Alan Rickman
#32. 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
#33. If you judge the character, you cant play it.
Alan Rickman
#34. What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.
Alan Rickman
#35. It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.
Alan Rickman
#37. That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.
Alan Rickman
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.
Alan Rickman
#42. Talent is an accident of genes, and a responsibility.
Alan Rickman
#43. If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.
Alan Rickman
#44. There's a voice inside you that tells you what you should do.
Alan Rickman
#45. If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.
Alan Rickman
#46. There is nothing wrong with a man being a Feminist, I think it is to our mutual advantage.
Alan Rickman
#48. I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.
Alan Rickman
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. A wounding tongue. I'm working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me.
Alan Rickman
#53. If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.
Alan Rickman
#54. 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
#55. I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.
Alan Rickman
#56. I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.
Alan Rickman
#57. I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience.
Alan Rickman
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.
Alan Rickman
#62. 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
#63. You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.
Alan Rickman
#64. When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter.
Alan Rickman
#65. Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we're in deep trouble.
Alan Rickman
#66. It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.
Alan Rickman
#67. 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
#69. Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch.
Alan Rickman
#70. 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
#71. What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.
Alan Rickman
#72. One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.
Alan Rickman
#73. I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.
Alan Rickman
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.
Alan Rickman
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.
Alan Rickman
#83. 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
#84. My definition of palatable might be slightly different from yours.
Alan Rickman
#85. 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
#86. I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously
Alan Rickman
#87. I don't play villains, I play very interesting people
Alan Rickman
#88. 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
#89. Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.
Alan Rickman
#90. My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.
Alan Rickman
#91. 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
#92. Mellow doesn't describe me. I'm hungry every day.
Alan Rickman
#93. Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.
Alan Rickman
#94. I have this feeling that if I could sort out what's on my dining room table, everything would fall into place.
Alan Rickman
#95. The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.
Alan Rickman
#96. Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.
Alan Rickman
#97. A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.
Alan Rickman
#98. 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
#99. I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.
Alan Rickman
#100. If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.
Alan Rickman
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