Alan Rickman Quotes

“Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.”

“Actors are actually very supportive of each other.”

“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.”

“All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you – almost seems to speak through you, in fact.”

“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.”

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

“I am the character you are not supposed to like.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“I like it when stories are left open.”

“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 love working in New York theater.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“I think worrying things are going on in England – a real apathy.”

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