169 Quotes by Alan Rickman

One of the most, in a weird way, encouraging things a director can say to an actor – I know this as an actor – is when you ask them a question, they say, I don’t know – ’cause it means there’s some space there for you to find out. And it means that there’s going to be a process.

One thing I will say – my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It’s an inverse equation, if that’s the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.

From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they’re in charge of their own career somehow or other.

It’s a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I’m in. There’s a horrible inescapability to it.

Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you – almost seems to speak through you, in fact.

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

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.

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.