Alan Rickman

Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,'' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'

Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.

I have this feeling that if I could sort out what's on my dining room table, everything would fall into place.

Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There's a great deal of wonderful energy there.

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.

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 do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.

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

On film you put all your energies into a single glance.

All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.

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

That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.

Why don't I like you?" "Because you think I'm an asshole, and I'm not really, I'm just British and, well, you're not.