Top 100 Alan Rickman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.”

— Alan Rickman

52. “There is nothing wrong with a man being a Feminist, I think it is to our mutual advantage.”

— Alan Rickman

53. “Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I’m not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we’re doing here.”

— Alan Rickman

54. “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.”

— Alan Rickman

55. “Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you’re part of the life of the city.”

— Alan Rickman

56. “Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.”

— Alan Rickman

57. “It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.”

— Alan Rickman

58. “My parents certainly didn’t have anything to do with the theater. I’m some kind of accident.”

— Alan Rickman

59. “I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.”

— Alan Rickman

60. “I don’t think it’s right that everybody knows everything about me.”

— Alan Rickman

61. “England in the ’60s and the ’70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.”

— Alan Rickman

62. “I love working in New York theater.”

— Alan Rickman

63. “I’m a lot less serious than people think, it’s probably because the way my face is put together.”

— Alan Rickman

64. “I’m still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there’s half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.”

— Alan Rickman

65. “When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter.”

— Alan Rickman

66. “The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn’t.”

— Alan Rickman

67. “I think worrying things are going on in England – a real apathy.”

— Alan Rickman

68. “I think the thing about film is, as it gets proved by a lot of young filmmakers now, that the medium will just go on reinventing itself, and so you just hope to be a part of that and not a part of some kind of endless regurgitation or ‘Here I am doing what you know I do’ kind of thing.”

— Alan Rickman

69. “So you can’t judge the character you’re playing ever.”

— Alan Rickman

70. “Originally, theater was my life. It was what I assumed I’d spend my working life doing – if I was lucky. Then along came movies.”

— Alan Rickman

71. “A wounding tongue. I’m working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me.”

— Alan Rickman

72. “I’m always aware of the camera and it feels like that’s the audience.”

— Alan Rickman

73. “From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they’re in charge of their own career somehow or other.”

— Alan Rickman

74. “Parts win prizes, not actors.”

— Alan Rickman

75. “My definition of palatable might be slightly different from yours.”

— Alan Rickman

76. “One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.”

— Alan Rickman

77. “I’ve learned, having been on a lot of sets, the good news is that by definition you are surrounded by experts. They get fired if they’re not – unlike in the theatre!”

— Alan Rickman

78. “You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.”

— Alan Rickman

79. “What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.”

— Alan Rickman

80. “The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.”

— Alan Rickman

81. “I’m very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you’re reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.”

— Alan Rickman

82. “Actors are actually very supportive of each other.”

— Alan Rickman

83. “You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else.”

— Alan Rickman

84. “The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-’80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club – or whatever the music was at that time – would not have been on my agenda.”

— Alan Rickman

85. “What’s interesting about the process of acting is how often you don’t know what you’re doing.”

— Alan Rickman

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

— Alan Rickman

87. “One of the most, in a weird way, encouraging things a director can say to an actor – I know this as an actor – is when you ask them a question, they say, I don’t know – ’cause it means there’s some space there for you to find out. And it means that there’s going to be a process.”

— Alan Rickman

88. “Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.”

— Alan Rickman

89. “I’m a quite serious actor who doesn’t mind being ridiculously comic.”

— Alan Rickman

90. “The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they’ve got the guts to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

— Alan Rickman

91. “In theater, you’ve got to be aware of your whole body because it involves stamina. It involves two-and-a-half hours and a sustained release of energy, maybe for six months.”

— Alan Rickman

92. “I hate it when my head, heart and aspirations are filled to the brim only with career. The rest of me hangs around like a jacket on the back of a doorknob.”

— Alan Rickman

93. “Good food but on my top ten hate list would be over-attentive waiters – I like watching my wine glass get emptier. I am close to slapping the arm of the next waiter who refills my glass after every sip.”

— Alan Rickman

94. “He met Rima Horton when she was fifteen and he was a year older; both were keen on amateur dramatics. Friends for several years, they became a couple around 1970 and remained together for the rest of Alan’s life, marrying in 2012.”

— Alan Rickman

95. “He was generous and challenging. Dangerous and comical. Sexy and androgynous. Virile and peculiar. Temperamental and languid. Fastidious and casual.”

— Alan Rickman

96. “Favoured holiday destinations were the Caribbean and South Africa.”

— Alan Rickman

97. “Is this control, depression or exhaustion?”

— Alan Rickman

98. “I must try not to be sucked into other people’s problems when all it does is drain my energy.”

— Alan Rickman

99. “Re-reading some pages of this diary is like looking at a graph of an exhausted mind.”

— Alan Rickman

100. “I am surrounded by people nervous of their own opinions.”

— Alan Rickman