He had a capacity to crush you with a look or lift you with a word.
Emma Thompson said today paying tribute to her friend and costar Alan Rickman.
When his death was announced earlier it felt to many like a punch to the gut; an actor whose powerful and commanding presence gave him a unique voice and a
the adoration of millions had suddenly gone. Few even knew he was ill.
He reached his film fame relatively late in life but then his list of successes—Die Hard, Sense and Sensibility, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films—showed his range and the depth of his character, the truly British villain.
Juliet Stevenson played his partner in Truly Madly Deeply, an achingly moving film about loss and grief. We’ll talk to her in a moment, but first a reminder of a scene in which he appears to her from beyond the grave.
Juliet Stevenson, there playing the grieving partner. That film is unbearably poignant at the best of times, today.
Yes, but um, you know, looking at it I’m thinking, well, you know, it’s it’s a good representation of what he could do, which was basically everything, you know, make people cry, make people laugh, make them fall in love with him—very sexy, delicious, surprising, challenging. I mean, you kind of see
he could do anything, and that you kind of get some sense of his range I think in that film, um.
Those scenes were improvised. Well, that scene was pretty improvised because it wasn’t, you know, there’s not much dialogue in it, and it was actually the hardest scene to shoot and um.
But I mean the great gift of making that film with him was it was a very clever bit of casting by Anthony Minghella because we had known each other a long time and um, I always thought of him, like many people, as a sort of family member more than a friend even, and uh, so we had a lot of history and I think that sort of played in quite well to the to the story of the film.
But he was incredibly inventive person to work with, I mean very, very creative, thinking all the time about the bigger picture um, he had his eye on everything, you know, on what the camera was doing, what the design was. He he was a, he thought he thought very big and he had many, many kinds of talent that could address themselves to all all sorts of different parts of the job, so he he had a lot to offer in every department really, you know, he was a he was more than an actor, he was a
inspiration to pretty much everyone on on that crew, as as I’m as I’m sure he was on every crew really.
And that voice was properly hypnotic, wasn’t it? Sometimes there was a look, as Emma said, yeah, Emma Thompson said, one look or one word, an eyebrow, a a glance.Oh yeah, I mean he was he was the most economical person. I mean he’s sitting on my shoulder now, you know, looking down at me saying, you know, “Just think before you speak, Jules,” you know, he he he he he could he could make you you know roar with laughter with a couple of words; he could he could say something you know sort of searingly insightful with just a line.
