Alan Rickman Quotes (46 Quotes)

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

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

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

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

I am the character you are not supposed to like.

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

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

I can only guess at the pressures of funding an independent theater company in New York, but calling this production 'postponed' does not disguise the fact that it has been canceled. This is censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences--all of us are the losers.

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

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

Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.

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

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

Calling this production 'postponed' does not disguise the fact that it has been cancelled.

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.

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

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

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

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

I have a lovehate relationship with white silk.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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