HARDtalk (Transcript, 05 May, 2001)
Show: HARDtalk – BBC News 24
Interviewer: Tim Sebastian
Date: 05 May, 2001
Transcript (Via Alan Rickman Fan Page)
Tim Sebastian: You don’t yet know him as Severus Snape, but thousands of you soon will. That’s his part in the new Harry Potter movie that’s set to break all box office records. Of course, you might already know him for his parts in Sense and Sensibility, Truly Madly Deeply, Die Hard, Dogma and many other roles that have made him one of Britain’s best known actors. So, with all that behind him, how far does he share in the Harry Potter hype?
Alan Rickman, a very warm welcome to the programme.
Alan Rickman: Nice to see you.
TS: You managed just to sneak in to the premiere, did you, to get the last half hour?
AR: Yeah, about the last forty minutes because…I’m in Private Lives at the moment in the West End and we play Sunday matinees.
TS: There’s a double bill of Rickman in the West End isn’t there?
AR: Yeah, it depends on your taste! (Laughs) In the flesh or (gestures) blown up on celluloid.
TS: How did you like it, what you saw?
AR: It looked tremendous to me. I think the thing is that whenever…I was on the set and children were coming in and visiting, the endless refrain was, “Wow! It’s just like the book!” And I think that was certainly Chris Columbus’s and the producers’ aim: to be faithful to J.K Rowling’s imagination. And I think, given the fact that at the end of the screening last night the entire cinema stood up and cheered, I guess they’ve done it! (Smile broadens)
TS: That’s their reaction, but what about yours? Is it worth the hype in your view?
AR: Well, it’s worth any amount of hype to get children to read again, and in these kind of numbers, and… to have that kind of passion about sitting down in a corner turning pages of a book instead of, you know, pressing on computer keys all the time and just playing Playstations, and–.
TS: Did you buy into the fantasy?
AR: Buy into it in what sense? I mean, I–
TS: I remember you saying once in order to be really good at something you have to be wholly absorbed by it.
AR: Well, when I read the book I completely–. I didn’t stop turning the pages. So yes, in that sense. It’s a great story in a long line, long tradition, of that kind of story-telling.
TS: Are you amazed that it’s going to set box office records? For merchandising as well?
AR: No, I’m not amazed. It’s…caught the public imagination, and–. I mean, in a sense, the hype is incidental. The hype is hanging on to the coat-tails of something… sort of elemental, really.
TS: Are you going to get a decent share?
AR: (Laughs)
TS: I know that this is something that you’ve been campaigning for – you and British actors and Equity – to get a decent share, compared to your American counterparts.
AR: Well, yeah, we’re–. We’ve been taken advantage of for far too long, and we’re, I’m not talking about people who are–, whose names are sort of above the title. I’m talking, as indeed we all are, about the people whose livelihood depends on a reasonable return when they–
TS: A proper rate for a day’s work?
AR: Well, their work is shown for the next fifteen, twenty or thirty years and that’s probably when their working life is sort of over, to any large extent. It would be good for them to know that, when a film is shown, their work can receive some recompense.
TS: Are you receiving adequate recompense this time round?
AR: I think you’d better ask my agent! (Smiles)
TS: (Laughs) Well it’s clearly something’s that rankled because you’ve said in the past something has to be done about this, this is an absolute disgrace. I mean, you clearly feel strongly about it-
AR: Well, it is a disgrace.
TS: –you and other actors.
AR: I think it’s a disgrace that English actors get taken advantage of. It’s very different here.
TS: Paid a flat-rate, this is the problem isn’t it?
AR: Buy-out.
TS: A buy-out? But then you don’t have to agree to it do you?
AR: Well, you don’t have any option. You don’t do the job.
TS: That’s it? It’s a take it or leave it option is it?
AR: Absolutely. That’s why the union is now fighting for it to make it part of…Equity agreements.
TS: You used to rail against having to go to Hollywood to make big movies. Do you still do that? Do you say it’s awful that we all have to toddle off to Hollywood? Do you still wish these kinds of movies could be made by British–
AR: We all say lots of stupid things that, you know, you wish you could take back. (Smiles.)
TS: (Laughs) Which we religiously dig into and bring up again years later!
AR: Yeah, I’d like to rub them out. But there they are: you’re hoist by your own petard all the time and–. Well, I now have some experience of a town that I’m actually very fond of, and it’s filled with very close friends.
TS: LA?
AR: Yeah…If I go there, I have a kind of rule which is: don’t read the trades — trade magazines– and don’t go to any premieres and parties and all of that. So I work there and I live there and I see my friends and…travel– [indistinguishable]
TS: (Talking over Rickman) There is an LA without premieres and parties?
AR: Well, you’ve got to get on your bike a bit, if you can find a bike, or in a car or walk. Yes, absolutely: there’s some fantastic countryside and great people, and–.
TS: You said it was awful and disgusting at the same time?
AR: That’s true too. Well, wonderful and disgusting, probably, at the same time. It’s a town –it’s very small, you know. The centre of it is utterly devoted to an industry and it doesn’t–. Well, I say “the centre”: it’s actually a contradiction in terms as it hasn’t really got one. So, you have the life there that you want to have. And…that, to me, is renting a house in the hills and seeing friends, and reading books, and going to the movies.
TS: A place where British actors do extraordinarily well. I mean, it was a huge vote of confidence in this film, the Harry Potter film, that there was an entire British cast wasn’t it?
AR: Well, it was a measure of J.K. Rowling’s power, because it wasn’t going to be that way.
TS: She insisted on it?
AR: Uh-huh. (Nods assent)
TS: How hard a fight was that?
AR: I think if it’s in her contract–. She just… dug her heels in, you know. She’s got a wonderful sense of when to say no!
TS: What does it say– the part– about the point you’ve reached in your career?
AR: Harry Potter?
TS: Yes. Did it stretch you? Did you get a buzz out of it?
AR: (Quietly) No, not hugely…. It’s great fun to be part of something that’s going to be a kind of marker point, I suppose, in cinema history. Whatever people make of the film on any critical level, it’s an event…like the Beatles. And–.
TS: So, as events sometimes do open more doors, is that the idea? Is that why you took the part?
AR: No, I mean at this point in time I kind of do what interests me. And where…I feel that I’m going: actually I think that my job is to be a storyteller, and actors are very much part of a storytelling chain. There’s…the piece of work and one side of it’s the performer and the other side of it’s an audience, and–. Well, I should say, there’s the piece of work, the actor’s in the middle between the piece of work and the audience, and it’s my job to be as efficient a storyteller as possible. And to look for as many interesting avenues as… come up. And you can never predict what you’re going to say yes and no to ‘cause it’ll probably depend on what you just did.
TS: But you said the job gets harder and harder. You said a few years ago, “The more you understand what you’re capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically.”
AR: It’s true–
TS: Really?
AR: — because the more you kind of understand what, you know–. The imagination has a whole load of ideas and the equipment (laughs; pauses; smiles) seems to be less and less capable of matching the imagination! (Smiles broadly)
TS: Why? You’re a young man – I mean, you’re painting yourself as having waning, failing powers almost?
AR: No, I think you’re just more and more aware of the disparity between the two.
TS: That you’re not living up to what the part is asking of you?
AR: Maybe your imagination grows (gestures) or something. You know, in rehearsals for Private Lives, Lindsay Duncan and I would both say to the director, “You know, you have to realise that we’re right up against the edge of our ability here.” (Smiles)
TS: In what way? Why? Why are you up against the edge?
AR: Well, I think we only discovered it through rehearsals that this was –. We discovered our love of the play in rehearsals, and…that came out of a deep respect for the skill of its construction. And when you start to eventually analyse how a piece of work is constructed, it sort of asks you to be in a Restoration comedy in the first act, to switch to Chekhov in the second act, and [to] finish up in Feydeau in the third. And those are very different horses to ride. (Smiles)
TS: Wide range?
AR: Yes, and you need to have your feet in the saddle quite firmly…. And so I think that at every performance of that, certainly you’re aware of how difficult the job can be. But also of how much fun. And the same is true of Harry Potter. And you have to use your instrument very differently, you know. On film you’re perhaps spending most of the time waiting to work and so you’ve got to keep that energy release in check…but not let it go to sleep.
TS: And do you feel some nights when you go on in Private Lives, for instance, that you can’t ride those horses?
AR: It’s a very unpredictable thing. The nights when you’re feeling most tired and most… remote from being in any way capable of doing it, you go out there and some piece of alchemy happens and you’re freer. The nights when you’re feeling free in the wings and you go out there, then suddenly something tightens up. I don’t know, maybe we need the equivalent of a sports psychologist.
TS: But you don’t expect to be a machine. — But you’re not a machine, you’re not a robot.
AR: No, no, no. It’s a live event and so you’re at the mercy of… some version of the elements when you go out there.
TS: You make it sound very unpredictable.
AR: It is. Unpredictable–
TS: Does it feel that way?
AR: –and so it should be. (Nods) Yeah.
TS: Edgy, dangerous?
AR: Well, the play, the actors–?
TS: Could come unstuck?
AR: Could come very unstuck. And has.
TS: People don’t know that though, when they pay their money, do they, for their ticket?
AR: They don’t have a clue, but you can feel it! (Laughs)
TS: Think they’re getting Alan Rickman – professional, after all these years.
AR: You feel moments when it comes unstuck and the whole audience knows that something’s gone wrong and a certain silence descends ‘cause they’re suddenly aware that you’re an actor and you’re not–. They don’t believe in you, in the character, for that second. Then you’ve got to work hard for the next five minutes going, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I do know what I’m doing.” (Laughs).
TS: To get them back.
AR: “–ish.” [i.e., “sort of, in a manner of speaking, to some degree.”]
TS: “I haven’t forgotten my lines.” (Laughs) Something like that…Playing Antony at the Royal National Theatre: not a happy experience by all accounts?
AR: Um, I’ve actually never talked about that. And it was–
TS: No, everybody seems to talk about it on your behalf.
AR: Indeed they do: and like a lot of things where you read about yourself in the press, you think, “Where on earth did they get that piece of garbage from?” It’s–. What can I say about that? It’s–. I resent if ever in print it’s called a failure as a production, because they never point out that it played for eight weeks to completely sold-out houses, which doesn’t often happen at the Olivier Theatre, which seats eleven hundred people at every performance. And we did eight shows a week so–. It’s hard to–. You’ve got to re-evaluate the word ‘”failure’” on that level. Plus, the letters that one had from people saying “I don’t understand what they were talking about.”
TS: The critics, that is?
AR: Who, I have to say, in all honesty, I don’t read (a negating gesture): it doesn’t help me. And so I have no idea what they’ve specifically said. I get a general idea.
TS: Does it hurt you—
AR: Well, because I don’t know–
TS: –when they say, “Well, that was bad”, or people tell you what the critics have–?
AR: (Quickly) Well you can be hurt I’m sure. I don’t know, maybe you’d get hurt by criticism, I don’t know. Perhaps everybody does; I don’t think anybody reaches a point where you’re inured to it. But: what I would say about that production is, if I had my time again, not only would I approach it in the same way, but I’d go even further down the same avenue. What I think people were not certain about was–. You see, most of the time these days critics tend to write about…how actors do something; they don’t very often write about what actors are doing. And conscious choices are involved. It’s not an accident; it’s not like we’re getting it wrong; it’s actually a choice. And–
TS: People suggested though, there was an argument – that you were unhappy about the way it was produced.
AR: No, that was complete rubbish. Total rubbish. I read stuff after we’d opened about how Helen Mirren and I weren’t getting on. I’ve never been closer to an actress onstage than I was in that production. And offstage the greatest of friends. It was absolute rubbish. But people wanted to create some kind of furore offstage as well as on. But in terms of the production: I mean, I don’t know how much people know the play, but: we’re talking about two…leaders of the world, and at a certain point in their lives.
I was playing somebody who was basically an alcoholic. And I think people got very upset that they weren’t seeing a great hero. The point about the play, to me, is that you see these childlike people who were once great and they’re now reduced to being drunk, rowing, throwing things at each other–. Little domestic scenes where she’s trying to pin his armour on and he’s saying, “No, no, not like this. Like this.” It’s the most extraordinary deconstruction of a… great duo (gestures with two hands) and they’re presented as little children.
TS: And people argue over this in the press, and they argue over it by word of mouth. Don’t you ever wish you were in another profession, where you could just win a race and walk away with a prize, instead of having everybody sort of pick over what you’ve done night after night, day after day?
AR: Well, we’re no different to writers or poets or any other–. Well, in fact we are different because we interpret, we don’t actually create in that sense, but–
TS: You don’t watch yourself in films, do you?
AR: Er, not if I can help it. No, it doesn’t — thrill– me.
TS: And you don’t talk much about the theory of acting, but there was one point where you were asked about it and you said, “The camera likes you if it can see you thinking and, most importantly, listening.” Which is, perhaps, a strange thing for an actor to say, because most people would think you were judged on what you said, rather than–
AR: Yes, but you only speak as a human being in life and, therefore, if you’re trying to reproduce life onstage — and whenever I’ve worked, talked to students or, indeed, worked with young actors, when I was directing The Winter Guest as a movie particularly– I have an absolute mantra which is that you only speak because you wish to respond to something you’ve heard. So, the notion of an actor going away and looking at a speech they have in their bedroom alone at night is a complete nonsense to me. You’re–. What you have to say is completely incidental.
All I want to see from an actor, to me, is the intensity and accuracy of their listening. And then what you have to say will become automatic. And then it will be free, and alive. And you then can work on it and shape it and talk about it, but the basic kind of engine to it is: how accurate is your listening and how alive are you to your fellow actors; and how accurate is your response and how…bold?
TS: You mention The Winter Guest, which started out as a play and then you co-wrote the screenplay for that. This was–
AR: “–ish.” (Makes an equivocal, “so-so” gesture) It’s a kind of…slightly inaccurate credit. I mean, every word of that screenplay is Sharman Macdonald’s, but I was very much involved in the restructuring of it–
TS: As the director, and this was your debut–
AR: –yes, so that became a kind of writing credit.
TS: Learned a lot about acting from being a director?
AR: Well, we learned, all of us I would say learned, the most from the two twelve-year-olds.
TS: Why?
AR: It’s like when you’re a child. 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, and–.
TS: You were a pretty dreamy child yourself, weren’t you?
AR: So they say: yes, yes. Head in the clouds, and off dreaming. — But, anyway, these boys knew nothing else but to listen to each other.
TS: Talk to me a bit about your childhood. It wasn’t an auspicious start for a would-be actor was it?
AR: Well, what would be an auspicious start?
TS: In the sense of opportunities.
AR: I went to a school–. Well, all the schools I went to had all sorts of drama involved — particularly my eleven- to eighteen-year-old school, Latymer– which were very formative in terms of wanting to be an actor.
TS: Were they? And you had a lot of support from your mother didn’t you?
AR: Yeah. I mean, in the sense that I had a mother and a family who basically said, “Whatever makes you happy.” Because it must seem a bit odd if a son says, “I’m going to give up a career as a graphic designer and go back to being a student and go to drama school.”
TS: You father died when you were very young didn’t he?
AR: (Very quickly) Yeah, when I was eight.
TS: Which was a huge scar. You’ve talked about that quite a lot – it doesn’t go away really does it?
AR: Well, it doesn’t because, you know, I come from a working class family where you–. Perhaps these days you’re allowed to participate in events like that….In the past, I think [you got] somewhat annexed from your feelings, you know.
TS: You mean participate in the death? I mean you didn’t go to the funeral?
AR: We didn’t go to the funeral because–. Well, I actually think now that my mother was so distraught that she couldn’t have coped with having her children there as well. But it was a strange thing not to be there. And it’s a difficult thing. It’s not explained to you why you’re not there. But, you know, that was then, when there was a kind of “seen and not heard” ethic. (Very small smile)
TS: Quite political as a person?
AR: Well I grew up–. One of the images of my childhood that I’ll never forget is, every time there was an election, was my parents — including my father but particularly my mother– standing on a chair pinning…or sticking her yellow –they were then yellow and black– square turned that way round (gesturing with his hands to indicate square turned through 45 degrees to form a diamond) “VOTE LABOUR” stickers in the window.
TS: They’ve talked of you as a candidate a couple of years back.
AR: Rubbish. More rubbish!
TS: Nobody ever came to you? Nobody ever suggested it?
AR: I think they tried it on because somebody in a press office somewhere thought they’re not going to let Portillo have all the publicity without any challenge, so they thought, “What can we do? I know: let’s sling an actor up against him!”
TS: Labour insiders were brought out to say that Alan Rickman was a distinct possibility for Kensington and Chelsea.
AR: Well, they certainly never talked to me about it and of course the answer would have been No! Because why would one–. If you were going to do it, why would you do it in a completely safe Tory seat? And I have no political ambitions in that way anyway, so it was com-plete nonsense.
TS: But you do have causes don’t you? Amnesty International is a cause that you back?
AR: Uh, yes. Various people, like Children on the Edge I work a lot with and Action Aid, and–. You constantly try to make sense of your life and I’ve been very lucky and, as I say, I see myself as a storyteller. I therefore see my job as somewhat connected to real life and, I hope, the choices that I make indicate a desire to connect with an audience. So er, yeah, real life intrudes.
Like, you know, with Action Aid. I’m involved at the moment with the launch of a new book, called Broken Landscape, of photographs by Gideon Mandell. And, given what’s happening at the moment in the world, things get upstaged. And you’ve got a situation in Africa where a thousand children are dying every day. It’s a huge figure to ignore.
TS: People always ask actors what part they want to play but there was one politician in the Labour Party, Peter Mandelson , says he wants you to play him if there’s ever a film made of him. How do you feel about that?
AR: (Smiles) Depends on the script, I suppose. I mean, it’s difficult playing real people. I’ve done that a few times, and it’s –. Or people who have lived as it were: you know, what with De Valera and Rasputin. And you have very particular luggage on your back when you do that and you become very protective… of those people. Neil Jordan said to me, when I started doing the research on De Valera for Michael Collins, “So do you hate him yet?” before we’d started. And that made me put on such a pair of boxing gloves, because you can’t judge your characters; that’s the last thing you can ever do. You’ve got to go in there… informed, but innocent.
TS: Alan Rickman, we watch with interest who you put the gloves on for next time. Thanks very much indeed. (Sebastian and Rickman shake hands.)
AR: My pleasure.
TS: Thank you.
