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countesszeroI translated this interview pretty much as I was reading it so there are bound to be some mistakes (also my mother tongue is unfortunately not English.) schemingreader was so kind to give it a quick once over despite the fact that I caught her just before she was going to bed :) Also countzero (mr. countesszero?), the bestest husband of all, checked it. All remaining mistakes are solely mine.
Headline: My Voice Is A Problem
(Interview: Tanja Rest)
Long black coat, greasy hair: For an entire decade Mr. Rickman played the most dubious character in the Harry Potter universe, Severus Snape. He never liked to discuss this role in public, but now with the start of the final part of the series he finally breaks his silence–a little.
A talk with a man whose voice causes “eargasms”
(Translator’s note: This is a literal translation: The word for ear is “Ohr” in German, the word for “orgasm” is “Orgasmus” so the portmanteau “Ohrgasmus” is a word play that works better in German while it sounds clumsy in English! My apologies!)
London, Mandarin Oriental
The PR-people are beside themselves that this day is really happening. Ten years of Harry Potter and he never gave a single interview. Not until today! On the way to his suite topics he doesn’t like to discuss are mentioned: political views, his private life, his old movies, his villain roles, his role in “Harry Potter”. What remains? This:
Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ): Mr. Rickman, your recording of the Shakespeare sonnet No. 130 can be heard on YouTube. Do you remember this recording?
Alan Rickman (AR): I think, it’s on one of my CD’s. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun …”
SZ: It’s probably not possible to recite this poem in a more modest way than you did.
AR: Hm. Thank you. I remember a production of the “A Midsummer Night's Dream” I did in Stratford, many years ago. The director was Peter Brook. After one performance he told us: “You have to be aware of the fact that you will never be as good as this author!” I took these words to heart. They apply especially to the sonnets. They are like vessels, which contain an idea, and one has to keep this idea in mind. You must not recite a Shakespeare sonnet. You have to tell it. So what you heard on YouTube was not the “great Alan Rickman reading Shakespeare” but simply–Shakespeare.
SZ: One user commented, that she had an “eargasm” from your voice.
AR: Now I remember why I don’t use YouTube. When I was in drama school, my teacher told me, my voice comes from the drain pipe, the lower end.
SZ: Are you sure? British scientists developed a formula some years ago to define the perfect voice. The voices closest to this ideal were Jeremy Irons’ voice–and yours.
AR: I recall having heard about it, but I don’t understand the meaning of this. My voice always was and remains a problem, especially on the stage. It’s very soft and low and sits in a difficult place, sometimes it’s very hard to hear. There’s probably some sort of functional defect. Regarding my voice I definitely fare better with film, not the stage.
SZ: For the last ten years you played the role of the potion master Severus Snape, the most dubious and interesting character in the Harry Potter universe. You always refused to discuss this role. Why?
AR: I always thought that he is one of the elements in this complex and enormous tale that shouldn’t be explained. It’s very important for the imagination of children, that no one interferes with it. That’s why I kept my mouth shut. And even now I’d rather not talk about what happens to Snape in the end. There are still children who clap their hands over their ears and don’t want to know at all.
SZ: Supposedly you were the only one on the set who knew Snape’s secret from the beginning.
AR: That isn’t entirely correct. I had a small piece of information that Jo Rowling gave me. Small but crucial. And believe me: It was not the end of the story. I had merely asked her to give me something about Snape, so I knew which direction he would take. To keep that in mind while playing him.
SZ: Of course you won’t tell us what that information was?
AR: Of course not.
SZ: Do you remember the day you filmed your last Snape-scene?
AR: Absolutely. It was in the Great Hall of Hogwarts and like every time there was a big spectacle. “And this is … the last scene for Alan!” Much applause, hoorays and so on. It’s a bit like leaving your own body and looking down at yourself standing there and telling yourself: ‘That’s the end now.’ But an actor’s life is always full of last days: One project ends, the next one begins.
SZ: Really? No regrets? Or, maybe the opposite: Relief?
AR: In some way I didn’t feel anything. Well, of course you have these close relationships that develop over weeks and months. Here it was a whole decade. Then again for each film I had only seven weeks of filming. In the meantime I worked on other movies, played theatre, directed. When I returned to the set the costume was always the same. The same long, black coat. The only difference was: The kids had grown a bit taller again.
SZ: You mean Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint aka Harry, Hermione and Ron.
AR: I watched them growing up–and the other children as well. “Neville” for example was tiny and round when we started, today he is long and thin. The adorable red-haired “Weasley” twins became these 1.90m creatures … They had their own little community on the set, the children. We grown-ups were always a little on the side. And then there was this day when I sat with Daniel Radcliffe in NY, we drank coffee together and talked. And I remember how I suddenly thought: This is a conversation at eye-level. This moment has touched me.
SZ: Daniel Radcliffe was a millionaire at age twelve. You grew up in the poorest circumstances. Working class: What did that mean to you in your case?
AR: Very simple: We were aware of what things cost. You couldn’t simply snap your fingers and get what you wanted. We British live in a country that is defined by the class system. But I appreciate my back ground and my childhood–what it taught me, how it shaped me.
SZ: Weren't you deprived of anything?
AR: Only material goods. Otherwise I got everything I needed: love and encouragement to be myself. Of course I did miss my father. He died, when I was eight years old.
SZ: You were four children. How did your mother manage?
AR: She did a whole series of jobs. She cleaned offices, worked as an operator, sat at a sewing machine and sewed covers for car seats. She did what she had to do to bring us children up.
SZ: How does your family cope with your success today?
AR: They are of course happy for me, but fortunately not very impressed. I don’t believe, that they think, what I do, is more important than what anyone else does. Truthfully we don’t even talk about my job. My niece is expecting her second child, that's much more interesting to us.
SZ: At age thirteen you received a scholarship for the renowned West London Latymer Upper School. How much do you owe to this scholarship?
AR: I owe everything to it.
SZ: How so?
AR: Because I was able to attend a school where you got celebrated if you displayed an interest in two subjects as different from each other as art and physics. Well, it wouldn’t have been necessarily my choice, but there was this boy in my class: When we had to choose two main subjects he chose these. Later he became an art teacher. But no one ever asked him: Art and physics, what’s that about? My school also had a great theatre tradition. We always produced new plays, on a high level.
SZ: Is it correct that you often had to play the female roles?
AR: It was a boy’s school. Someone had to do it.
SZ: If your mother would have had a similar chance, than she wouldn’t have had to sew covers for car seats, right?
AR: That happens to be a very good example, because my mother was a very talented singer. She even had some performances but then my father died, and we had no money. So she never got to have a career for herself. I often think about how unfair that was.
SZ: It took a while until you had your breakthrough in the film industry. You took your first film role, as opponent of Bruce Willis, in the age of 42. Did the film business pick up since then?
AR: These days you have much less time to build up a career. I have a seat in the board of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where I also studied. Every year 3000 young people apply for 30 college places. You need talent to be accepted there. But we also live in a world, where the height of your cheekbones can be a crucial, deciding factor. After I left drama school I performed for years in small, local theatres. It was the long, tough way. Today our graduates know that they can be a film star next week if they have the right face. The medium of film can cover up many imperfections.
SZ: May I ask you, how you got to your hotel today?
AR: My driver knocked on my door, picked me up and drove me here.–Why?
SZ: Do you have the impression that you are, now that you succeeded, so to say, shielded from the real world?
AR: I remember the first time I flew first class. Or, which was much more impressive for me, the first time I boarded a limousine with tinted panes, going to some appointment. How this window whirred up and the world behind it disappeared. I experience all of this on a very modest level, compared with some of the big names in this industry–the idols of this world. But it’s exactly as you said: The main purpose of a first class seat in an airplane or a limousine with tinted panes at this point in my career, is to keep the world away. To create a distance.
SZ: Which can be quite useful at times.
AR: Much of it is pure strategy. Because of this distance you become an object of fantasies. You always have to keep in mind that this is not who you are, the characters you played. Were you to board a bus or a train–not so much I myself–but famous people–your life would be hell. They would attack you like a plague of locusts. If someone like Brad Pitt were to attempt to shop at Selfridges: Don’t even think about it!
SZ: Have you ever caught yourself, trying to avoid the public?
AR: Ah, no. I still walk around in London, stand in queues and go to the supermarket, where I doubtlessly profit from the fact that the English always look at the ground. In America it’s much harder because people are so in love with this idea of celebrity.
SZ: We talked about you reading Shakespeare. Isn’t it difficult for an actor to do so little?
AR: It is. A good script guides you, or a good director like Ang Lee, with who I filmed “Sense and Sensibility”.
SZ: How was working with him?
AR: He is Taiwanese, his English wasn’t always … great. He distributed little notes at the set, and you had to ponder over them for a long while because they were written in this Hong Kong English. Emma Thompson wrote everything down in her diary and just recently told me about it again. After a scene she filmed she got a note from Ang Lee that said: 'Emma, try to not look so old …'
SZ: Not very flattering …
AR: Yes, but he didn’t mean “old”, merely “precocious”. Anyway my note read: “Alan, be more subtle–do more!” I admit I was a little confused. In fact he wanted to tell me to do more of the subtle stuff. I trust him until today. Through making films you can learn things, that later benefits you on the stage. You can just stand there, do nothing, say nothing–but as long as you really have something in your mind the camera will catch this thought, display it. I find this very encouraging.
SZ: With due respect to your minimalism you’re a famous ‘scene stealer’. Bruce Willis and especially Kevin Costner in “Robin Hood” didn’t always look very good beside you …
AR: That’s a phrase that journalists apply on some actors. I don’t particularly appreciate it.
SZ: I am suggesting now you didn’t do it on purpose. But isn’t this a great compliment?
AR: I would prefer if people would keep their focus on the story. Concerning these labels, I keep to what I said about YouTube: I prefer not to think about it.
schemingreader was so kind to give it a quick once over despite the fact that I caught her just before she was going to bed :) Also countzero (mr. countesszero?), the bestest husband of all, checked it. All remaining mistakes are solely mine.Headline: My Voice Is A Problem
(Interview: Tanja Rest)
Long black coat, greasy hair: For an entire decade Mr. Rickman played the most dubious character in the Harry Potter universe, Severus Snape. He never liked to discuss this role in public, but now with the start of the final part of the series he finally breaks his silence–a little.
A talk with a man whose voice causes “eargasms”
(Translator’s note: This is a literal translation: The word for ear is “Ohr” in German, the word for “orgasm” is “Orgasmus” so the portmanteau “Ohrgasmus” is a word play that works better in German while it sounds clumsy in English! My apologies!)
London, Mandarin Oriental
The PR-people are beside themselves that this day is really happening. Ten years of Harry Potter and he never gave a single interview. Not until today! On the way to his suite topics he doesn’t like to discuss are mentioned: political views, his private life, his old movies, his villain roles, his role in “Harry Potter”. What remains? This:
Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ): Mr. Rickman, your recording of the Shakespeare sonnet No. 130 can be heard on YouTube. Do you remember this recording?
Alan Rickman (AR): I think, it’s on one of my CD’s. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun …”
SZ: It’s probably not possible to recite this poem in a more modest way than you did.
AR: Hm. Thank you. I remember a production of the “A Midsummer Night's Dream” I did in Stratford, many years ago. The director was Peter Brook. After one performance he told us: “You have to be aware of the fact that you will never be as good as this author!” I took these words to heart. They apply especially to the sonnets. They are like vessels, which contain an idea, and one has to keep this idea in mind. You must not recite a Shakespeare sonnet. You have to tell it. So what you heard on YouTube was not the “great Alan Rickman reading Shakespeare” but simply–Shakespeare.
SZ: One user commented, that she had an “eargasm” from your voice.
AR: Now I remember why I don’t use YouTube. When I was in drama school, my teacher told me, my voice comes from the drain pipe, the lower end.
SZ: Are you sure? British scientists developed a formula some years ago to define the perfect voice. The voices closest to this ideal were Jeremy Irons’ voice–and yours.
AR: I recall having heard about it, but I don’t understand the meaning of this. My voice always was and remains a problem, especially on the stage. It’s very soft and low and sits in a difficult place, sometimes it’s very hard to hear. There’s probably some sort of functional defect. Regarding my voice I definitely fare better with film, not the stage.
SZ: For the last ten years you played the role of the potion master Severus Snape, the most dubious and interesting character in the Harry Potter universe. You always refused to discuss this role. Why?
AR: I always thought that he is one of the elements in this complex and enormous tale that shouldn’t be explained. It’s very important for the imagination of children, that no one interferes with it. That’s why I kept my mouth shut. And even now I’d rather not talk about what happens to Snape in the end. There are still children who clap their hands over their ears and don’t want to know at all.
SZ: Supposedly you were the only one on the set who knew Snape’s secret from the beginning.
AR: That isn’t entirely correct. I had a small piece of information that Jo Rowling gave me. Small but crucial. And believe me: It was not the end of the story. I had merely asked her to give me something about Snape, so I knew which direction he would take. To keep that in mind while playing him.
SZ: Of course you won’t tell us what that information was?
AR: Of course not.
SZ: Do you remember the day you filmed your last Snape-scene?
AR: Absolutely. It was in the Great Hall of Hogwarts and like every time there was a big spectacle. “And this is … the last scene for Alan!” Much applause, hoorays and so on. It’s a bit like leaving your own body and looking down at yourself standing there and telling yourself: ‘That’s the end now.’ But an actor’s life is always full of last days: One project ends, the next one begins.
SZ: Really? No regrets? Or, maybe the opposite: Relief?
AR: In some way I didn’t feel anything. Well, of course you have these close relationships that develop over weeks and months. Here it was a whole decade. Then again for each film I had only seven weeks of filming. In the meantime I worked on other movies, played theatre, directed. When I returned to the set the costume was always the same. The same long, black coat. The only difference was: The kids had grown a bit taller again.
SZ: You mean Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint aka Harry, Hermione and Ron.
AR: I watched them growing up–and the other children as well. “Neville” for example was tiny and round when we started, today he is long and thin. The adorable red-haired “Weasley” twins became these 1.90m creatures … They had their own little community on the set, the children. We grown-ups were always a little on the side. And then there was this day when I sat with Daniel Radcliffe in NY, we drank coffee together and talked. And I remember how I suddenly thought: This is a conversation at eye-level. This moment has touched me.
SZ: Daniel Radcliffe was a millionaire at age twelve. You grew up in the poorest circumstances. Working class: What did that mean to you in your case?
AR: Very simple: We were aware of what things cost. You couldn’t simply snap your fingers and get what you wanted. We British live in a country that is defined by the class system. But I appreciate my back ground and my childhood–what it taught me, how it shaped me.
SZ: Weren't you deprived of anything?
AR: Only material goods. Otherwise I got everything I needed: love and encouragement to be myself. Of course I did miss my father. He died, when I was eight years old.
SZ: You were four children. How did your mother manage?
AR: She did a whole series of jobs. She cleaned offices, worked as an operator, sat at a sewing machine and sewed covers for car seats. She did what she had to do to bring us children up.
SZ: How does your family cope with your success today?
AR: They are of course happy for me, but fortunately not very impressed. I don’t believe, that they think, what I do, is more important than what anyone else does. Truthfully we don’t even talk about my job. My niece is expecting her second child, that's much more interesting to us.
SZ: At age thirteen you received a scholarship for the renowned West London Latymer Upper School. How much do you owe to this scholarship?
AR: I owe everything to it.
SZ: How so?
AR: Because I was able to attend a school where you got celebrated if you displayed an interest in two subjects as different from each other as art and physics. Well, it wouldn’t have been necessarily my choice, but there was this boy in my class: When we had to choose two main subjects he chose these. Later he became an art teacher. But no one ever asked him: Art and physics, what’s that about? My school also had a great theatre tradition. We always produced new plays, on a high level.
SZ: Is it correct that you often had to play the female roles?
AR: It was a boy’s school. Someone had to do it.
SZ: If your mother would have had a similar chance, than she wouldn’t have had to sew covers for car seats, right?
AR: That happens to be a very good example, because my mother was a very talented singer. She even had some performances but then my father died, and we had no money. So she never got to have a career for herself. I often think about how unfair that was.
SZ: It took a while until you had your breakthrough in the film industry. You took your first film role, as opponent of Bruce Willis, in the age of 42. Did the film business pick up since then?
AR: These days you have much less time to build up a career. I have a seat in the board of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where I also studied. Every year 3000 young people apply for 30 college places. You need talent to be accepted there. But we also live in a world, where the height of your cheekbones can be a crucial, deciding factor. After I left drama school I performed for years in small, local theatres. It was the long, tough way. Today our graduates know that they can be a film star next week if they have the right face. The medium of film can cover up many imperfections.
SZ: May I ask you, how you got to your hotel today?
AR: My driver knocked on my door, picked me up and drove me here.–Why?
SZ: Do you have the impression that you are, now that you succeeded, so to say, shielded from the real world?
AR: I remember the first time I flew first class. Or, which was much more impressive for me, the first time I boarded a limousine with tinted panes, going to some appointment. How this window whirred up and the world behind it disappeared. I experience all of this on a very modest level, compared with some of the big names in this industry–the idols of this world. But it’s exactly as you said: The main purpose of a first class seat in an airplane or a limousine with tinted panes at this point in my career, is to keep the world away. To create a distance.
SZ: Which can be quite useful at times.
AR: Much of it is pure strategy. Because of this distance you become an object of fantasies. You always have to keep in mind that this is not who you are, the characters you played. Were you to board a bus or a train–not so much I myself–but famous people–your life would be hell. They would attack you like a plague of locusts. If someone like Brad Pitt were to attempt to shop at Selfridges: Don’t even think about it!
SZ: Have you ever caught yourself, trying to avoid the public?
AR: Ah, no. I still walk around in London, stand in queues and go to the supermarket, where I doubtlessly profit from the fact that the English always look at the ground. In America it’s much harder because people are so in love with this idea of celebrity.
SZ: We talked about you reading Shakespeare. Isn’t it difficult for an actor to do so little?
AR: It is. A good script guides you, or a good director like Ang Lee, with who I filmed “Sense and Sensibility”.
SZ: How was working with him?
AR: He is Taiwanese, his English wasn’t always … great. He distributed little notes at the set, and you had to ponder over them for a long while because they were written in this Hong Kong English. Emma Thompson wrote everything down in her diary and just recently told me about it again. After a scene she filmed she got a note from Ang Lee that said: 'Emma, try to not look so old …'
SZ: Not very flattering …
AR: Yes, but he didn’t mean “old”, merely “precocious”. Anyway my note read: “Alan, be more subtle–do more!” I admit I was a little confused. In fact he wanted to tell me to do more of the subtle stuff. I trust him until today. Through making films you can learn things, that later benefits you on the stage. You can just stand there, do nothing, say nothing–but as long as you really have something in your mind the camera will catch this thought, display it. I find this very encouraging.
SZ: With due respect to your minimalism you’re a famous ‘scene stealer’. Bruce Willis and especially Kevin Costner in “Robin Hood” didn’t always look very good beside you …
AR: That’s a phrase that journalists apply on some actors. I don’t particularly appreciate it.
SZ: I am suggesting now you didn’t do it on purpose. But isn’t this a great compliment?
AR: I would prefer if people would keep their focus on the story. Concerning these labels, I keep to what I said about YouTube: I prefer not to think about it.
