Best 95 quotes of Alan Rickman on MyQuotes

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.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 don't play villains, I play very interesting people

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

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

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

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

If you judge the character, you cant play it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'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.

I never expected to have any kind of film career, to be honest. It was all a bit of a surprise. But I was in a big hit play on Broadway. America, as many people will say, says yes more often than we do. And so I was suddenly surrounded by people saying yes. But I was aware that was 'cause of what I was in. It had a big impact.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.