Alan Rickman is crouched over a dressing table in his chilly dressing room in the Piccadilly theater. He looks a little tired, a little harassed, and instead of winding down after another arduous performance, he is painstakingly working his way through a foot high pile of letters. The fan mail alone bears testament to Rickman's spiraling popularity, but the inner man is less than dazzled by his success.'I am a worrier,' he explains politely, as though pointing out a fatal flaw in t\his character. 'My approach to work is rather like my approach to life. I'm a bit like a dog with an old slipper.' Rickman locks his features into a grimace of cross eyed worry, a raised eyebrow suggesting his abhorrence of his doggy persona. 'I like to think that my philosophy of life is just do it, get on with it. But I don't. I'm a dreadful procrastinator. When I go to bed at night it's as if there's a bit of me that says, "Now go on, have a really good brood...", while there's this other bit of me saying, "Oh, go to sleep." There are so many nooks and crannies in my mind and in my persona which need a little exercise, so they come out at night.'
These nocturnal demons often mean that Rickman gets as little as five hours sleep a night. And during the day, worry can be transmuted into social responsibility- and fan mail. The top letter reads: 'Your comments about my play filled me with great hope. I continue to write...' Had Rickman read a fan's play? 'Yes, well, it smelt like it needed to be read,' he shrugs, almost defensively. 'Actually it was rather good. Look at this one; it's so sad, 'he adds picking up a tragic life story which has been written into three sheets of paper, and recreated, apparently, to cathartic effect in Rickman's West End performance of Tango at the End of Winter. Rickman has that sort of effect on people. When he played the ruthlessly seductive Valmont in Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, women in their droves struggled to analyze Rickman's appeal.
'I am a feminist,' one women wrote to the director Hampton. 'I strongly object to this character on principle, but I can't help myself fancying Alan Rickman.' She was not alone. Beatie Edney, who played a virgin seduced by Valmont, says: 'There was always at least one of us in love with Alan- on stage that is. But I know that if I were to tell him I'd had a crush on him , he'd say "Oh shut up, Beatie."
He probably would. For Rickman is contemptuous of the glib sentiment or the easy clichΓ©. He says, quite simply, that it is the actor's job to seduce an audience. After the brooding intensity of his screen personae, what strikes you about Rickman in person is his warmth, supple wit and self- deprecating humor. He is sexy, certainly, and sardonic sometimes, but the sulky, suave, world weary matinΓ©e idol is just one facet of an infinitely more complex man.
Talking to Rickman you sense that his ambition is fuelled by a keen sense of his own worth allied to a well-defined social conscience and an iron determination to remain in control in a profession where actor's reputations are gobbled up for breakfast. 'I know a lot about myself,' he says. 'On the one hand I'm the person who's loading up the washing machine in the morning. But when crowds stare at you at the stage door you're suddenly someone else. There are moments when you've got to stop yourself spiralling off. Like when your agent starts arguing percentages or the size of names on a billboard.' How does he prevent takeoff?
'I hope Rima is around, ' he smiles. A warm astute woman, Rima Horton lives with Rickman in West London. The couple met when they were both in their twenties at a local amateur dramatics society in West London. 'No, it was not Love At First Sight', he growls, but it was shortly after he left his childhood home in Acton.
An economics teacher who will shortly be lining up, along with Glenda Jackson, as a prospective Labour parliamentary candidate (for Chelsa) in the next general election, Rima had been with the actor for over 20 years. In a profession where partners can appear to last as long as runs of plays, their relationship appears a model of endurance and mutual respect.
'I'd hate for us to be presented as something extraordinary,' says Rickman. 'We're just as messy and complex as any other couple, and we go through just as many changes. But I really respect her rima and i can sit in a room just reading, and not saying anything to each other for an hour, then she'll read something to me and we'll both start giggling.'
The relationship, Rickman believes, works partly because Rima is not in the same profession. 'I think it's difficult for two actors to live together because this business burns up any available space. Clearly Judi Dench and Michael Williams have made a success of it, but maybe they've learnt to leave business behind in the rehearsal room. I've never learnt that trick. I bring all problems home. I brood. But Rima just laughs and goes straight to the heart of the matter. No matter what problems she has she puts her head on the pillow and goes straight to sleep'.
Rickman was born 44 years ago to Welsh parents, the second eldest of four children. His father, a painter and decorator, died from cancer when Rickman was eight years old. He recalls a, 'devastating sense of grief.' Money was short, the children learnt their responsibilities fast, and Rickman's most enduring memories of those years are being sent to do the grocery shopping. 'Images of not being quite able to reach a knocked and kicking tin cans about the streets.' At primary school Rickman played the leading role in King Grizley Beard. King Grizley who? 'I don't know, but I remember getting a huge buzz out of it.'
The buzz continued at Latymer Upper School, West London, to which Rickman won a scholarship at the age of 11, where 'there were wonderful inspirational teachers' and opportunities to act. Despite the pressure of being one of the eldest boys in a large family, Rickman emphasizes the support of his family. 'I've never done anything for sensible reasons,' he says. 'But they never raised an eyebrow.' For a cleaver boy like Rickman the sensible thing would have been university, but he chose to go to the Royal College of Art where, aged 171/2, he confronted his first naked lady- in a life class. 'Not a turn-on, but a buzz.'
After the RCA, Rickman set up a Soho-based design company. Two years later, he quit to go to the RADA, 'A voice in the head saying, "It's time to do it. No excuses."' He worked his way through the RADA, as a dresser to Ralph Richardson and Nigel Hawthorne.
After two years of rep, including squeezing himself into a squirrel's costume for Christmas panto, Rickman hit his first lead role and his first sexually explicit love scene, opposite his first 'big name leading lady'- Anna Calder-Marshall- in The Devil Is An Ass. 'I had to say, "from these hills to this valley..."' Rickman waves his arms vaguely from his chest to his crotch. 'I mean, where else could I put my hands?'
Only six years later, the actor was standing stark naked in the Royal Court Theater in The Grass Widow. 'A very strange thing to do. You have to pretend its not happening to you.'
Having played Valmont in the award winning Les Liaisons Dangereuses both in London and on Broadway, Rickman was asked to play the terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard with Bruce Willis. 'Filming was like a holiday after playing Valmont eight times a week,' he says, and the film was like the best ride at the best funfair'. It may have felt like a breeze, but Rickman's ideas about how his character should look shaped the direction of the movie. The role of the cool suit-clad terrorist propelled Rickman into international Fame. Today, he is one of the hottest screen properties, a consequence, partly, it seems of playing the coolest villains.
Last autumn he starred in three films in the top 10: Robin Hood; Truly, Madly, Deeply, and Close My Eyes. As the cuckolded husband in the latter, Steven Poliakoff's saga of incest, he found himself underneath Saskia Reeves who was wearing nothing but a see-through nightie. 'I've done a lot of hopping in and out of bed naked, but this was my first actual sex scene. She whispered to me, did I have any knickers on? I did. I mean God forbid there should be any real contact.'
The absence of knickers notwithstanding, love scenes, Rickman feels, 'should come naturally. Every kiss should be specific. We didn't rehearse the major scene in TMD, when Juliet Stevenson first sees me [Rickman plays her ghostly lover]. But Juliet and I had done a lot of kissing in Les Liaisons. That was one of the worst things about the New York run. I didn't sleep, I got mouth ulcers, and kissing with mouth ulcers isn't fun.
'Actually,' he boasts, 'I've kissed some of the greatest actresses around - Fiona Shaw, Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson...' The actresses are also part of a close circle of friends, mostly women, who play an important part in Rickman's life.
Simple pleasures, he insists, are what matters: 'Sitting around a table with good friends, some sympathy, nice wine good talk, what could be better than that? Except sex. Or getting it right on stage.' After the latter he may be found dining out in restaurants like the Ivy or Le Caprice. His ideal Sunday (often his only day off) is a leisurely lunch with Rima and other friends, followed by a walk of French cricket in the park.
Ask his friends about Rickman's virtues and they name the big ones: loyalty, sympathy, boundless generosity and practical encouragement. Among his vices, Rickman, cites 'a wounding tongue. I'm working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me.' Friends add that their are times when he wants to control too much. A caricature of the Rickman they love, but can be infuriated by is a cartoonish hybrid of the Sheriff of Nottingham and the romantic but manipulative Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply. 'He can be outrageously, creatively over the top, almost like a little boy,' says one friend, 'but he's also loving and gentle, and controlling. Like Jamie you feel if you lived with him, he might move the furniture around while you went shopping.'
Rickman is a staunchly committed socialist, but periodically his social conscience may spiral into fantasy territory. He will announce he's going to work for Mother Teresa... His friends patiently advise other ways. 'He's an angel and a killer at the same time,' says his old friend Ruby Wax. 'He's two extremes - total humility and total ego. He is that self-centered and he is that generous; the artist and the social conscience - a complete mixture of Yin and Yang.' After filming Times Are Changing Back, Rickman looks froward to seeing more of his friends like Ruby Wax, and Rima - 'instead of colliding at weekends' - and shopping, 'mooching around in department stores', one of his favorite pastimes. His strong visual eye is a quality his women friends value especially. Before the last Labour Party conference, Rickman took Rima shopping. 'We eventually found the right suite in Workers for Freedom. It was a real knockout, but ironic, given the name and the price tag.
'He's always trying to make a well-dressed woman out of me, ' laughs his old friend Juliet Stevenson. 'And failing to his immense frustration. he has a brilliant eye. He'll pick out a garment which will look like this grey, sacking bedspread-like thing and say, "That." Of course it looks terrific on.'
Talking to Rickman you get a sense of a man and an actor whose talents and qualities are perfectly balanced between the hard-headed pragmatist and the visionary dreamer. A creative tension, but a tension nevertheless. Before he went to New York to play Valmont, Rickman went briefly to a shrink. "A bit like taking yourself to the launderette. A good idea if you can afford it.'
He talks with scrupulous honesty about his compulsions. An important need, he recognizes, 'is for the child to come out and play'. He has no children of his own, but with friends he enjoys, 'regressive trips to see trash movies like Terminator 2 - 'Morally corrupt, I know but the special effects are wonderful.' In America, his treat is theme parks, like Disneyland and Magic Mountain - the scarier the roller coaster ride the happier Rickman is. And whenever he can, he goes out to play with his sister's children, Amy and Claire, aged eight and 10. 'We do all those daft things - movies, McDonald's, Hamleys. Last time, I told them we'd walk through Hamleys to choose one thing each. They marched straight to the Barbie counter - I couldn't believe it - hideous little dolls with pointed legs and breasts. My sister doesn't dress them in pink or bows.
'However, if I had children, I'd like to think I'd let them wear whatever they wanted. None of my friends would believe me, but I'd let them walk down the road in pink Lurex and gold plastic.
Source https://wordswithalan.wordpress.com/1992/02/01/rickmans-worth-2/
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