His master’s voice
By Helen Barlow – The Advertiser
Acclaimed actor Alan Rickman is a man of vast vocal talent, reports HELEN BARLOW.
ALAN Rickman is a classically trained actor with one of those deep, rousing British voices that can be used to great, empowering effect in all kinds of movies. He can be loving and eerie, as he was for his ghostly lover in his breakthrough movie, Truly, Madly, Deeply; he can be sinister too, as he was portraying creepy Hans Gruber for his American debut in Die Hard, and also his trademark sneering Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
He can do heavy dramatics such as politician Eamon De Valera in Michael Collins; and he can be very, very funny, as when he portrayed a disdainful, neutered angel in Dogma and an actor who once played a television alien in surprise cult hit Galaxy Quest.
That was before Harry Potter, where all his skills merged in one creepy character, Hogwarts teacher Severus Snape. ”Severus starts to invade the story much more at the end of this one,” Rickman explains, referring to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. ”I’ve got it down to about seven weeks. I filmed the previous ones over a longer period, but coming in and out of things gets a bit tricky.”
Now that he has our attention once more, Rickman has left all that severity behind to play two, well, relatively normal men.
Earlier this year, he appeared bedecked in a wig in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, as an 18th century merchant trying to save his daughter from a young man keen to turn her virginal odour into perfume; while in Snow Cake, his motorist befriends the autistic mother of a hitchhiker he has accidentally killed after giving her a ride.
No matter how normal the characters are, however, they still have Rickman’s voice. Where does it come from?
”Oh, this is what I’m stuck with,” he says breathily, sounding like his depressed robot from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ”It’s to do with having a high roof of the mouth apparently.” He sticks his fingers up his mouth, so that he sounds even throatier. ”I should be a good singer, but a teacher at drama school wasn’t too encouraging.”
Although he is in a jovial, buoyant mood today, Rickman doesn’t like to talk too much about the Harry Potter behemoth, preferring to devote his time promoting his smaller films ”without a huge publicity machine behind them”. Besides, Snow Cake is a film he was closely involved in. He even helped enlist the services of Sigourney Weaver, his Galaxy Quest co-star, to play the autistic mother in the film. And Weaver, who will forever be known as Ripley from the Alien films, was eternally grateful.
”I don’t think I was their obvious choice for Linda,” she confides. ”Luckily, Alan thought I would do a good job and that gave me confidence.
”He’s such an astonishing actor and a wonderful comedian. I think he deserves more movies that are about him, so it was great to read something that was written with him in mind: his wit, his kind of melancholy, his depth.”
A Canadian-British co-production written by Angela Pell and directed by Marc Evans, both of whom are British, Snow Cake is set in a wintry Canadian backwater, where presumably Weaver’s Linda can be accepted and feel safe. Rickman’s Alex, a murderer and ex-con, doesn’t seem to have any friends, so that when he knocks on Linda’s door he is forced to let down some of his guard because Linda takes everyone she meets at face value.
”It’s hard for me to imagine what that must be like to be involved in the death of someone and then go to knock on the door of that person’s mother,” Rickman admits.
”The story is seemingly quite simple but it’s actually about something quite big. It’s about rolling up your sleeves and getting on with it.”
Rickman lives in London with politician Rima Horton. Over the years, he has fought to save London theatre, and is personally interested in pursuing meatier subjects in his work, ”sex, religion politics, any of those words with big letters”.
Born in 1946 to Irish and Welsh parents, he initially studied at the Royal College of Art. When he developed the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Dangerous Liaisons and portrayed Valmont, the play became a huge hit. He was understandably disappointed when the role went to John Malkovich in Stephen Frears’ screen version.
Rickman delves into black comedy and we can only imagine what he will get up to as Judge Martin (sic.) in Tim Burton’s new version of Sweeney Todd, which also stars Johnny Depp and Sacha Baron Cohen.
While Rickman is clearly a bit of a ham, I ask him if he is anything like his buttoned-up, introspective Alex in Snow Cake.
”Well, not really. I haven’t killed anybody yet,” he says.
