DE -PRESS -ED

Why Alan Rickman politely reckons the write can get stuffed

"Film Review" (UK), May 1992

David Aldridge

Alan Rickman has a love/hate relationship with the press.
He loves to hate it.
"You're damned if you don't." Britain's hottest actor tells me.Talk to the press that is.

"If you talk to them, they misquote you." "And, if you don't talk to him, they just make it all up anyway".
Mind you, being paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

"One national paper attributed an entirely made-up quote to me", the "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood" star explains. "My jaw just dropped when I saw it". He exaggerately mimics a stage actor's dropped jaw.

"Another national ran a completely fabricated interview. I just never gave it".

Which is obviously why, at the nominations lunch for this year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts "BAFTA" awards, stage-and-screener Rickman politely cold-shoulders any and all national-press advances.
Some he just verbally evades.
But one persistent national newshack gets a flamboyantly-mimed zipped mouth response when she goes after a few words.

"I've declared a moratorium on interviews", confides Rickman, who was BAFTA-nominated both as Best Actor for the true-Brit "Truly, Madly, Deeply", and, by way of complete contrast, as Best Supporting Actor for the Hollywood hugie "Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves".
"Besides, this is my day off (the BAFTA nominations lunch is held on a Sunday).
"I like to just laze".

But Rickman does talk to "Film Review". Sort of.

It's a few words here and a few words there as we stroll together from nominations lunch to outside photo shoot, and back to nominations lunch.

At the shoot, which is held in a church courtyard just a stone's throw from BAFTA's London Piccadilly headquarters, Rickman happily signs autographs for some kids.
And he's equally amenable to camera-toting tourists who don't quite believe thet this shy, fair-haired man is Robin Hood's black haired and black-hearted Sheriff of Nottingham, but who snap away at him anyway. But he's far frostier when formally approached for anything approaching an interview.

"It gets hard sometimes", he confesses. "Coping with the lack of privacy."
"Privacy?", pipes up an ear-wigging other BAFTA nominee. "He doesn't get any anymore!"
Admittedly.

Yet Rickman, who's dressed for the occasion in stylishly mismatched grey jacket and blue trousers, does own up deriving great satisfaction from his new elevation to superstar status.
"It's been a great year for me. Of course it has been. I'd be stupid not to be enjoying my success."

And he intends, he says, to pursue where possible his mixing-and-matching of smaller British projects with American blockbusters.
For Rickman, success as a big screen star is obviously a dream come true.
He was, after all, raised on the cinema.
"I'm a Saturday-morning-pictures kid", he confesses, smiling as the old memories flood back.

Now he's making some of the sorts of movies he use to sit all goggle-eyed, just watching. Which brings us neatly to what's next moviewise for this much-ind-emand actor. As the question is asked, the barriers come almost audibly crashing down. All actors are sensitive, even superstitious, about talking too soon about work what-might-bes. Rickman is as sensitive as any of them.

"Let's just say there are a few things about to happen", he tells me, courteous and charming despite his evident discomfort at the question. "But I can't tell you what for a few days yet".

And he edges off to collect his two BAFTA nominations envelopes.

 

 

Transcription courtesy Rickmanista Review