Top 50 Alan Rickman Quotes

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.

And it’s a human need to be told stories. The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.

Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we’re in deep trouble.

In theater, you’ve got to be aware of your whole body because it involves stamina. It involves two-and-a-half hours and a sustained release of energy, maybe for six months.

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it’s a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

Talent is an accident of genes – and a responsibility.

It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

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 love perfumes. Every morning when my girlfriend and I come down to the courtyard in our block of flats we’re assailed by the most delicious scent – jasmine round a doorway. It almost makes me swoon.

My parents certainly didn’t have anything to do with the theater. I’m some kind of accident.

I’m always aware of the camera and it feels like that’s the audience.

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.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.

Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.

If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.

Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that’s all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It’s a weird thing that happens when you’re an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people’s hopes or something.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.

It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.

I approach every part I’m asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn’t get it, or if he does?

You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.

You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.

I don’t think it’s right that everybody knows everything about me.

I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.

I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It’s kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It’s a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.

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

Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you’re part of the life of the city.

The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they’ve got the guts to say, ‘I don’t know.’

I’m a lot less serious than people think.

I have every sympathy for writers. It’s a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, ‘I’m not saying that’ or, ‘How about we move this to here? Wouldn’t that make that bit of the story better?’ But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.

I can only see my limitations. That’s just who I am.

What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, ‘I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.’ Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.

I’m still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there’s half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.

On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes.

I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.

I love working in New York theater.

You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else.

I’ve never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.

The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible. Or, what’s impossible? What’s a fantasy?

Parts win prizes, not actors.

So you can’t judge the character you’re playing ever.

I am the character you are not supposed to like.