Alan Rickman Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 am the character you are not supposed to like.

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

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

If you judge the character, you cant play it.

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

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

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

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

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!

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

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

Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city.

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

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

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

I love working in New York theater.

You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.

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

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

Parts win prizes, not actors.

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

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

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

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.

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

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.

Talent is an accident of genes, and a responsibility.