«Süddeutsche Zeitung» 14 January, 2016
An actor’s life is full of final days
During his lifetime, Alan Rickman did not like to talk about political views, his private life, or his role in Harry Potter. In 2011, the actor gave SZ one of his rare interviews. This interview was conducted in 2011 on the occasion of the release of the last Harry Potter film featuring Alan Rickman. On the occasion of his passing, we are publishing it again.
London, Mandarin Oriental. The PR people can hardly believe that this interview day is actually happening. Ten years of Harry Potter and not a single interview from him—until now! On the way to his suite, the topics he does not like to talk about are reviewed once again: political views, his private life, his old films, his villain roles, his role in Harry Potter. What remains? This.
SZ: Mister Rickman, on YouTube, one can listen to you reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 130. Do you remember the recording?
Alan Rickman: I believe it’s on a CD. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun …”
SZ: An actor could hardly speak those lines more modestly than you did.
Rickman: Hmmm. Thank you. I remember a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Stratford, many years ago. Peter Brook directed it. After a performance, he said to us: “You must understand one thing: you will never be as good as the author.” I took that to heart. This is especially true for the sonnets. They are like vessels that carry a thought, and you have to keep that thought in mind. You must not recite a Shakespeare sonnet. You must speak it. What you heard on YouTube was not “The great Alan Rickman reads Shakespeare.” It was simply—Shakespeare.
SZ: One user’s comment read that your voice gave her an “eargasm.”
Rickman: Now I remember why I don’t use YouTube. When I was in drama school, a teacher said that my voice sounded like it was coming from a drainpipe. The lower end.
SZ: Are you sure? Years ago, British scientists developed a mathematical formula to describe the perfect voice. The closest to the ideal were the voices of Jeremy Irons—and yours.
Rickman: I recall hearing about that, but I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean. My voice has always been a problem, especially in theater. It is very quiet and sits in a difficult place; at times, it is hard to hear. There is probably some kind of functional defect. When it comes to my voice, I am definitely better suited for film than for theater.
SZ: Over the span of ten years, you have now played the role of the Potions Master, Snape, for the eighth time—one of the most ambiguous and fascinating characters in the Harry Potter universe. You have always refused to talk about Snape. Why?
Rickman: I have always thought that he is one of those elements in a vast and complex story that should not be explained. It is very important for children’s imagination that we do not interfere with it. That is why I kept my mouth shut. And even now, I would actually prefer not to talk about what happens to Snape in the end. There are still some children who cover their ears because they absolutely don’t want to know.
SZ: On set, you were said to be the only one who knew Snape’s secret from the very beginning.
Rickman: That is not entirely true. I had a small piece of information that Jo Rowling gave me. Small but crucial. And believe me: it was not the end of the story. I had simply asked her to whisper something to me about Snape—so that I would know which path he would take. So I could keep it in mind while playing him.
Here is the English translation of the text:
SZ: And of course, you won’t reveal here what that piece of information was.
Rickman: Of course not.
SZ: Do you remember the day you filmed your last Snape scene?
Rickman: Absolutely. It was in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, and as always, there was a big fuss. “And this is… the last scene for Alan!” Applause, cheers, and so on. It’s a bit like leaving your body, looking down at yourself, and thinking: This is the end. But an actor’s life is full of final days—one project ends, the next one begins.
SZ: Really? No regrets? Or perhaps, on the contrary—relief?
Rickman: In a way, I didn’t feel anything at all. Of course, you form close relationships that develop over weeks and months. In this case, it was an entire decade. However, I only filmed for about seven weeks per movie. In between, I worked on other films, did theater, and directed as well. When I returned to the set, the costume was always the same. The same long, black coat. The only difference: the three little ones had grown a bit taller again.
SZ: You mean Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint—Harry, Hermione, and Ron.
Rickman: I watched them grow up—and the other kids, too. Neville, for example, was tiny and round when we started, and now he’s tall and thin. The adorable red-haired Weasley twins turned into these 1.90-meter-tall creatures… The kids had their own little community on set; we adults were always a bit apart. And then, suddenly, there was a day when I sat with Daniel Radcliffe in New York. We were having a cup of coffee and talking. I remember suddenly thinking: This is a conversation between equals. Between adults. That moment really touched me.
SZ: Daniel Radcliffe was a millionaire at twelve; you grew up in extreme poverty. Working-class—what did that mean in your case?
Rickman: Quite simply: We were very aware of what things cost. You couldn’t just snap your fingers and get what you wanted. We Brits live in a country shaped by the class system. But I appreciate my background and my childhood—for what it taught me, for how it shaped me.
SZ: Did you feel like you lacked anything?
Rickman: Only material things. Otherwise, I got everything I needed: love and encouragement to be myself. Of course, I missed my father. He died when I was eight years old.
SZ: You were one of four children. How did your mother manage?
Rickman: She worked a whole range of jobs. She cleaned offices, worked as a telephone operator, sat at a sewing machine stitching covers for car seats. She did whatever she had to do to feed us kids.
Here is the English translation:
SZ: How does your family feel about your success today?
Rickman: They are happy for me, but fortunately, they are not very impressed. I don’t think they see what I do as more important than what everyone else does. To be honest, we don’t talk about my profession at all. My niece is expecting her second child—that’s far more interesting to us.
SZ: At 13, you received a scholarship to the prestigious West London Latymer Upper School. How much do you owe to that scholarship?
Rickman: I owe it everything.
SZ: In what way?
Rickman: Because it allowed me to attend a great school where you were celebrated for having interests as different as art and physics. Well, that wouldn’t have been my choice, but there was a boy in my class who, when we had to choose two main subjects at 16, picked those two. He later became an art teacher. But no one ever asked him: Art and physics—what’s the point of that? My school also had a strong theater tradition. We were constantly performing plays—at quite a high level.
SZ: Is it true that you often had to play female roles?
Rickman: It was a boys’ school. Someone had to do it.
SZ: If, let’s say, your mother had been given the same opportunity as you, she probably wouldn’t have had to sew car seat covers, would she?
Rickman: That’s actually a very good example because my mother was an exceptionally talented singer. She even had a few performances, but then my father died, and we had no money. So, a career never came of it. I often think about how unfair that was.
SZ: It took a while for your breakthrough in film—you landed your first movie role at 42, playing opposite Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Has the industry become much faster since then?
Rickman: People have much less time to build a career nowadays. I sit on the board of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where I also studied. Every year, 3,000 young people apply for 30 spots. You need talent to get in. But we also live in a world where the height of your cheekbones can be a deciding factor. When I left drama school, I spent years performing in small regional theaters—the long, hard road. Today, our graduates know that they could be movie stars by next week if they have the right face for it. Film as a medium can cover up a lot of flaws.
SZ: May I ask how you got to this hotel today?
Rickman: A driver knocked on my front door, picked me up, and brought me here. Why?
SZ: Do you ever feel that, now that you’ve “made it,” you are being shielded from the real world?
Rickman: I remember the first time I flew first class. Or—more impressively for me—the first time I got into a limousine with tinted windows, on my way to some event. The way the window hummed as it rolled up, shutting out the world behind it. I experience all this on a very small scale compared to some of the big names in the film industry—the gods of the world! But it’s exactly as you say: The primary purpose of a first-class seat on a plane or a limousine with tinted windows is to keep me away from the world at this point in my career. To create distance.
SZ: Which, in some ways, can be useful.
Rickman: A lot of it is calculated. Distance turns you into an object of other people’s fantasies. You have to be aware of that: That’s not you—that’s the characters you’ve played. If you were to take a bus or a train—not so much me, but more famous people—your life would be hell. They would swarm you like locusts. If someone like Brad Pitt tried to shop at Selfridges—forget it.
SZ: Have you ever caught yourself avoiding the public?
Rickman: Oh no, I still walk around London, stand in queues, and go to the supermarket—though I undoubtedly benefit from the fact that the English always stare at the ground. It’s harder in America because people there are so obsessed with the idea of celebrity.
SZ: We spoke about how you read Shakespeare. Isn’t it difficult for an actor to do so little?
Rickman: Yes, it is. A good script helps. Or a good director—like Ang Lee, with whom I worked on Sense and Sensibility.
SZ: What was that like?
Rickman: He’s Taiwanese, and his English was… not always great. He would hand out little notes on set that took a long time to decipher because they were written in this Hong Kong-style English. Emma Thompson recorded all of this in her diary and recently reminded me about it. After one scene, she got a note from Ang Lee that said: “Emma, try not to look so old.”
SZ: Not very flattering…
Rickman: Yes, but he didn’t mean old—he meant too wise, too mature. On my note, it said: “Alan, be more subtle—do more!” I admit, I was a bit confused. What he actually meant was that I should do more of the subtle stuff. I still trust him to this day. In filmmaking, you learn something that can even help you later on the theater stage: You can just stand there, say nothing, do nothing—but as long as you are truly thinking something, the camera will capture that thought. I find that very encouraging.
SZ: Minimalism aside, you are actually known as a scene stealer. Bruce Willis—and especially Kevin Costner in Robin Hood—didn’t always look good next to you…
Rickman: That’s a term journalists use for some actors. It’s not a concept I particularly like.
SZ: I assume you didn’t do it on purpose. But isn’t it a great compliment?
Rickman: I’d rather people focused on the story. As for labels like that, I treat them the same way I treat YouTube—I prefer not to engage.
Alan Rickman was born in 1946 as the second of four children in West London. A scholarship allowed him to attend a prestigious school where he regularly performed in plays. He first studied graphic design before training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His success as the Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses led to his first film role in Die Hard (1988). This was followed by roles in Robin Hood with Kevin Costner, Sense and Sensibility, and Sweeney Todd. In all eight Harry Potter films, he portrayed the character of Snape. Alan Rickman had been with Labour politician Rima Horton since 1977.
