Alan Rickman opens up about last day on set of DH2 & his thoughts about the series' end
Cross posted here @ alanrickman
In yet another foreign-tongue interview, Alan Rickman speaks once again about his part in the Harry Potter series, something he has been strictly quiet about until now. Roughly translated from the original German (and to the best of my ability), he briefly discusses Severus Snape, his last day on the set of Deathly Hallows: Part II and his feelings regarding his work on the decade-long series where it has finally come to an end as well as watching his young co-stars grow up including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Matthew Lewis, and James and Oliver Phelps.
On his character:
After ten years we see you for the eighth time in the role of the magic teacher Snape, the mysterious and most interesting character in the Harry Potter universe. You always refused speaking about Snape. Why?
I always found it is one of these elements in an enormous and complicated history which should not be explained. It is very important for the imaginative power of children that you do not in-bungle them there. Therefore, I held my tongue. And even now I would not like to really talk about what actually happens to Snape at the end. There are still a few children who are keeping their ears shut and in no way want to know it.
At the start, you have been the only one to have known Snape's secret.
This is not quite right/completely correct. I owned a small piece of information, which Jo Rowling gave me. Small, but crucial. And believe me: it was not the end of the story. [As the films went on] I had asked her to only whisper something to me about Snape in the ear - so I knew which way he would take [in the course of the story], and to keep it in mind when playing him.
On his last day on set:
Do you remember the day when you did your final Snape scene?
But that was in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, and as always, there was a great ‘’Bohei’’ (big fuss). "And this is...the last scene for Alan!" Applause, cheers, calls and so on. However, it is a bit… as if you leave your body and you look down at yourself and you say: ‘’This here now is the end.’’ But an actor's life is full of last days - a project ends, and begins the next.
His thoughts on leaving the series and the growth of his co-stars:
Really? No regret? Or perhaps, quite the reverse: Relief?
In a way I have felt nothing at all. Well, one naturally has of course these close relationships that develop over weeks and months. Here, it was even a whole decade. However, I had only about seven weeks of shooting per film. In between, I have made other films, plays, directed [plays] also. When I came back again on the set, the costume was always the same. The same long, black coat. The only difference: The three little ones had become again a bit larger.
Do you mean Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint alias Harry, Hermione and Ron?
I have watched them grow up - and the other children also. "Neville" [Matthew Lewis] for example was tiny and round when we started, today he is long and thin. The cute little red-haired "Weasley" twins [James and Oliver Phelps] have become these 1.90 metre tall creatures... They had their own small community on the set, the children; we adults always stood aside/a bit apart. And suddenly came the day when I was sitting with Daniel Radcliffe in New York City, we drank a cup of coffee and talked. I still know how I suddenly thought: this is a conversation at eye level. Among adults. This moment has affected me.
The rest of the interview, where Rickman goes into greater detail about his childhood and backround, how his working class status has affected his life choices and career, and how he and his family deal with his large success and overall fame can be read below: Interview: Tanja Rest
Long black coat, greasy hair: For a decade long Alan Rickman has played the mysterious character in the Harry Potter universe, Severus Snape. At the start with The Philosopher’s Stone public talk [from the actor] has been rare if ever. Now with the final episode of the saga he breaks his silence - a little. A conversation about the success of a man who causes "orgasms’’ with his voice.
London, Mandarin Oriental. The PR people wait no longer as this interview day actually takes place. Ten years of "Harry Potter" and not a single interview of him. Until now! On the way to his suite he goes through again the topics, of which he does not speak gladly about: political views, his personal life, his old films, his villain roles, his role in "Harry Potter". What remains? This.
"My voice is a problem"
Sueddeutsche Zeitung: Mister Rickman, on YouTube you can be heard as you read Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 130. Do you remember the recording?
Alan Rickman: I think it is on a CD. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun..."
SZ: More modest, as you have done it, an actor cannot speak these lines, probably.
Rickman: Hmmm. Thanks. I remember a production of "Midsummer Night's Dream" in Stratford, many years ago directed by Peter Brook. After a performance, he said to us: "You need to know: you will be never as good as the writer." I took great heed of that. It applies particularly to the sonnets. They are like vessels, which carry a thought, and one must keep this thought in mind. One may not recite a Shakespeare sonnet. One must speak it. What you have heard on YouTube was therefore not ‘’the magnificent Alan Rickman reads Shakespeare". But simply - Shakespeare.
SZ: A comment from a user read that from your voice she gets an "ear orgasm".
Rickman: Now I know why I don't use YouTube. When I was in the drama school, a teacher said my voice came from a drainpipe. The lower end.
SZ: Are you sure? Years ago, British scientists have developed a mathematical formula to describe the perfect voice. The voice of Jeremy Irons - and yours next was the ideal voice [when combined].
Rickman: I remember to have heard of that, but I do not understand what is meant by that. My voice was and remains a problem, particularly in the theatre. It is very quiet and sits in a difficult place, sometimes you can hear it very poorly. Is there is any functional defect? Probably. With regard to the voice, I am clearly better waived/placed with the film than in the theatre.
SZ: After ten years we see you for the eighth time in the role of the magic teacher Snape, the mysterious and most interesting character in the Harry Potter universe. You always refused speaking about Snape. Why?
Rickman: I always found it is one of these elements in an enormous and complicated history which should not be explained. It is very important for the imaginative power of children that you do not in-bungle them there. Therefore, I held my tongue. And even now I would not like to really talk about what actually happens to Snape at the end. There are still a few children who are keeping their ears shut and in no way want to know it.
SZ: At the start, you have been the only one to have known Snape's secret.
Rickman: This is not quite right/completely correct. I owned a small piece of information, which Jo Rowling gave me. Small, but crucial. And believe me: it was not the end of the story. [As the films went on] I had asked her to only whisper something to me about Snape in the ear - so I knew which way he would take [in the course of the story], and to keep it in mind when playing him.
Someone had to do it
SZ: And of course you will not reveal what information was there.
Rickman: Course not.
SZ: Do you remember the day when you did your final Snape scene?
Rickman: But that was in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, and as always, there was a great ‘’Bohei’’ (big fuss). "And this is...the last scene for Alan!" Applause, cheers, calls and so on. However, it is a bit… as if you leave your body and you look down at yourself and you say: ‘’This here now is the end.’’ But an actor's life is full of last days - a project ends, and begins the next.
SZ: Really? No regret? Or perhaps, quite the reverse: Relief?
Rickman: In a way I have felt nothing at all. Well, one naturally has of course these close relationships that develop over weeks and months. Here, it was even a whole decade. However, I had only about seven weeks of shooting per film. In between, I have made other films, plays, directed [plays] also. When I came back again on the set, the costume was always the same. The same long, black coat. The only difference: The three little ones had become again a bit larger.
SZ: Do you mean Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint alias Harry, Hermione and Ron?
Rickman: I have watched them grow up - and the other children also. "Neville" [Matthew Lewis] for example was tiny and round when we started, today he is long and thin. The cute little red-haired "Weasley" twins [James and Oliver Phelps] have become these 1.90 metre tall creatures... They had their own small community on the set, the children; we adults always stood aside/a bit apart. And suddenly came the day when I was sitting with Daniel Radcliffe in New York City, we drank a cup of coffee and talked. I still know how I suddenly thought: this is a conversation at eye level. Among adults. This moment has affected me.
SZ: Daniel Radcliffe at twelve years was a millionaire; You grew up in poor circumstances. Working class: What has this meant in your case?
Rickman: Quite simply: We were very aware/conscious of what things cost. You could not simply flick with your fingers and get what you wanted. We Brits now live in a country that is determined by the classification system. But I guess my background and my childhood - what they taught me - is how it has shaped me.
SZ: Was nothing missing to you?
Rickman: Only material things. Otherwise, I got everything what I needed: love and the encouragement to be myself. My father was missing to me, naturally. He died when I was eight years old.
SZ: There were four children. How has your mother gotten through that?
Rickman: She took up a number of jobs. Cleaning offices, working as a telephone operator, she even sat at a sewing machine and sewed covers for car seats. She did what she had to do in order to feed us children.
Rickman was also convincing as a woman
SZ: How does your family today deal with your success?
Rickman: They are happy for me, fortunately but also not very impressed. I do not believe that they find what I do more important than what all they do. Honestly, we never discuss my work. My niece just expected her second child, we find that interesting.
SZ: At the age of 13 [correction: 11], you received a scholarship to the renowned West London Latymer Upper School. How much do you owe to this scholarship?
Rickman: I owe everything to it.
SZ: How? To what extent?
Rickman: Because I was allowed to go to a great school, where one was celebrated if you were interested in such two different things such as art and physics. Well, that would have certainly not been my choice, but there was a boy in my class: When we had to choose two majors at 16, he decided on these two subjects. He later became an art teacher. But no one has ever asked him: art and physics, what is that? My school had a large theatre tradition. We had specified pieces all the time at a fairly high level.
SZ: Is it true that you had to assume the roles of women rather often?
Rickman: It was a school for boys. Someone had to do it.
SZ: If, say, your mother would get a similar chance just like you, she would have to sew no car seats, or… ?
Rickman: That is, purely coincidentally, a very good example, because my mother was an exceptionally/unusually talented singer. She even had a few appearances, but then my father died, and we had no money. Thus a career never came from it. I often think, how unfair that was.
SZ: Up to your breakthrough in cinema, it took some time: the first movie role you took over, as an opponent of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, was at the age of 42. Has the business become since then not quite as fast?
Rickman: One today has much less time to build oneself a career. I sit on the Board as an executive committee of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where I also studied. Each year 3000 young people apply for 30 seats. It takes talent to be included there. But we also live in a world in which the height of the cheekbones can be crucial. When I left drama school, I for many years appeared in small, regional theatres. The unionists. Today, our graduates know that they can be a movie star next week if they have the right face for it. Medium of film can cover many flaws/faults.
SZ: May I ask, how you came today to this hotel?
Rickman: A driver knocked on my door, collected and brought me. -Why?
"Attempt that old look"
SZ: Do you sometimes get the impression that where you have managed to be now so to speak, has kept you from the real world?
Rickman: I remember the first time I flew first class. Or, for me, even more impressively, the first time I entered a limousine with darkened windows, on the way to some date: how this disc was placed so highly up and the world disappeared behind it. I experienced that at a very low level, compared with some of the big names in the film business - all the idols of the world! But it's just the same, as you say: is the primary purpose of a first class seat in a plane or a limousine with dark windows to keep me, at this point in my career, from the world? To create distance?
SZ: Which in turn can also be quite useful.
Rickman: Much of it is calculated. By the distance, you become an object in the fantasies of others. You need to be always aware of that: That is not you, these are the characters you played. Should you get in a bus or a train - not so much I, but more famous people -, your life would be hell. They would descend on you like locusts. Someone like Brad Pitt would try shopping at Selfridges: Forget it.
SZ: Have you ever tried to avoid the public?
Rickman: Oh, no, I'm still here around in London, stand in queue and go into the supermarket where I profit certainly from the fact, no doubt thereof, that the English always stare at the ground. In America, it is more difficult, because the people are so fond of this idea of prominent figures.
SZ: We talked about how you have read Shakespeare. Is it not difficult to do so little for an actor?
Rickman: Yes, that's it. A good script helps one. Or a good film director like Ang Lee, with which I shot Sense and Sensibility.
SZ: How was it with him?
Rickman: He is Taiwanese, his English was... not always great. He handed out notes on the set, where one would muse over for a very long time because they were written in this Hong Kong-English. Emma Thompson has it all written down in her diary, and she told me about it again recently. She, by the way, got a note from Ang Lee after a scene which read: "Emma, attempt that old look."
SZ: Not very flattering...
Rickman: Yes, but he didn’t mean "old", but "intelligently old". In any case, on my piece of paper was: "Alan, is more subtle - do more!" I admit to have been somewhat confused. In fact he wanted to tell me in this way, that I should make more of the subtle things. I trust him to this day. In the film-making you can learn something that helps later even on stage: you can just stand, say nothing, do nothing - but as long as you really think something, the camera will map this idea. I find this very encouraging.
SZ: Your minimalism is an honour, but in fact you are a notorious "scene stealer". A thief of scenes. Bruce Willis and especially Kevin Costner in Robin Hood did not always look well beside you...
Rickman: This is a term that journalists apply to some actor. It is not a concept that particularly appeals to me.
SZ: I do know now that you have not done so intentionally. But that is not a huge compliment?
Rickman: I would prefer if the people would keep the story in mind. With regard to such labels, because I think it is like that with YouTube: I prefer that it not deal with me.
Alan Rickman was born in 1946 as the second of four children in West London. A scholarship allowed him to attend a traditional school, where he regularly acted in theatre. He first studied graphic design and then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as an actor. His success as Vicomte de Valmont in the theatrical version of "Dangerous Liaisons" earned him his first movie role in 1988 in "Die Hard". There followed other projects including "Robin Hood" with Kevin Costner, "Sense and Sensibility" and "Sweeney Todd". In all eight "Harry Potter" films, he plays the character of Snape. Alan Rickman lives together with the labour politician Rima Horton for 34 years.