Alan Rickman

by Phillip Bergson

(Cinema )

 

Distinguished Royal Shakespearian actor Alan Rickman has plenty of reasons to tango at the end of summer with wild abandon. Not only is he deftly stealing from much richer actors in the multi-million dollar Robin Hood (the Kevin Costner version, of course, which in spite of critical carping seems to be hitting the box-office targets in every land in which it has bowed), but he also has two authentically British films on the way - playwright Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply (formerly called Cello) opened last week, and playwright Stephen Poliakoff's second feature as director. Close My Eyes which is released in London next month. And to cap it all, he returns to the West End in a spectcular staging of the contemporary Japanese drama Tango at the End of Winter, at the Piccadilly Theatre this week.

If he is a late starter, he has proved a fast learner - he only came into at acting at 26, abandoning graphic design, and after apprenticeships at the RSC and increasingly subsbntial roles, he came to prominence as the seducer Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which he repeated on Broadway, though not, alas, in either of the two recent film versions.

Nevertheless, in barely two years he has acquired a screen career, completing six varied ventures and assuring himself a place in Hollywood as the silky, witty villain (and accomplished scene-stealer, besting Bruce Willis as the German holding the sky-scraper to ransom in Die Hard, tackling Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under, and camping up a storm as the Sheriff of Nottingham in you-know which ).

He is softly-spoke, reflective and perceptive and with an easy humour that confirms the rumour that much of his dialogue in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was ad-libbed.

"I am a moviegoer and actually have quite wide tastes. I'm perfectly happy sitting in front of a good thriller or horror film, and I am extremely happy watching An Angel at My Table or Goodfellas, which are a million miles apart."

There seems to be a similar distance between Shakespeare at Stratford and villains in Sherwood and Hollywood. "An opportunity was given to me and its had a knock-on effect, he comments of his apparent swapping of stage for screen. "While the interest is there, on both sides, I'll explore it. But film is not to be done at the complete expense of theatre. I think theatre is a bit like going back into the gym and so it has to be done, or I might lose a certain set of muscles."

"I don't look on acting in film as acting with a lack of control - I think it's possible for actors to suggest things to directors - it's narrative, telling a story, and if you bring something to that particular process, and the director is awake, then they might just change anything that they had fixed the night before. Its a conversation - like the theatre, but it's just a conversation in a different language.

"I find film extremely rewarding - that may be something to do with the fact that the last play I did had a lot of words, and I was saying a lot of them, and it went on for three hours, and holding the reins for that long, your arms get tired! Your body needs another experience and it's very refreshing to do film, but it isn't just a palliative, I really do find it very interesting. What I really like about film is working so closely with the technical people. I like the fact that there's a group of people all involved, and there's always something to do, and when the word 'Cut!' happens, there's an immediate buzz of activity, and you have a context to place your work in."

One finished film that has not yet reached Europe is Closetland, a strange two-hander directed by a first-timer that was a world away from his Australian horse-epic.

"I'd say making Quigley Down Under were two of the happiest months of my life - that's one of the perks, I suppose, you get to be flown to the Australian Outback and you live there for a couple of months with some wonderful people. Not too many English actors get the chance to be in a corral doing a shoot-out, flipping the coat-tails back. and being fast on the draw. Fun would be the word.

The January Man was also very happy, incidentally - the problems with the film were due to the fact that while we were making it, there was a writers' strike, and John Patrick Shanley, who is one of the more organic writers, could not be on the set, so we were robbed of certain things that perhaps needed to be looked at."

He makes no grandiose claims for the differences in technique between acting on the stage and on the screen. "I think film has helped my theatre acting, though I'll find out now I'm going back ! It just reminds you of certain basics that you ignore at your peril. Less is more, though I'm quite interested in more! I think you can do more than you think you can in cinema - I think cinema takes a lot more than people give it sometimes, as long as you're listening to the other actors.

"If somsething's happening inside your head which is called listening, the camera will pick it up. Or you may be lucky and have a face like Garbo and then the audience can write anything on it, but you've got to have a very particular set of features for that. I don't like to watch rushes because it makes me too selfconscious and so I'd rather not know that I'm being shot at the most appalling angle with the most unflattering lighting!"

His keen interest in the process suggests an eventual wish to direct, which he readily admits. "Whether it'll be in the theatre to begin with I don't know, but something's been set in motion "

Now he can begin to exert choices in film, as he presumably has for some time in stage roles, Rickman re-asserts the importance of scripts.

"It's been an odd route - I've done six films now, there's a bunch of them about to come out. Three of those I've been working in two dimensions, and three of them I've been working in three dimensions, and I enjoyed both. I like the work to entertain, as well as whatever the other word is! I've done the Sheriff of Nottingham and I think I should lay that sort of work to rest for a while! With Close My Eyes, I'd worked with Stephen Poliakoff in the theatre before, and he wrote the part of Sinciair for me, he says. It was also made last summer. In 95 degrees of heat. I did about two-and-half weeks of very concentrated filming.

"My characterization had something to do with the clothes and an attitude to clothes, and that helped me not to pigeon-hole him too much, and give him some ambiguity. There was the 'uniform' that he wore to be behind a desk, and there were certain things that he was more relaxed in - he was perfectly happy in a track-suit and sneakers. But any bit of information about a character is always in the script. The film is disturbing, erotic, ambiguous, elliptical, relevant...

"I always put myself in black now, so you know what I'm doing! In Quigley Down Under, I was in black, and the Sheriff of Nottingham only wears black - that's my cartoon life; I'm quite dark in Truly, Madly, Deeply but I'm also quite nice - it's a love story. I think I'm fairly sympathetic in Close My Eyes. As for the future, I would just like to be the victim of other people's lack of pre-conceptions!"

Well, they always say it's harder to hit a moving target so Alan Rickman's return to the boards should prove not only cause for celebration, but a re-appraisal of his mercurial talents.

 

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page - now not accessable