Alan Rickman (46 page)

‘Also, in a totally admiring way, I wonder if there isn't a streak of femininity in him, a kind of sweetness that perhaps you expect more from other women than men.' It is still extraordinary in this day and age that a red-blooded man who enjoys the company of women has to justify himself; not that Alan Rickman does any such thing.

He is fortunate to live among that great big family called the British theatre, a substitute for the more traditional nuclear kind. His empathy with the female sex is accepted and respected.

The playful quality that Jules Wright admired, the playmate whom Saskia Reeves teases: all come together in this tall and imposing figure who doesn't need to prove anything. As Elaine Paige once said, small people have to shout ‘Look at me, I'm down here.' But showbusiness is full of ambitious midgets. The giants of this world have a more relaxed and almost passive attitude, which brings us back to Alan Rickman's passive aggression.

Friends and colleagues do feel tender about him; despite their criticisms, mostly constructive ones, he is regarded as a force for good. As with Latymer, he cocoons himself within an inner circle of supporters. And, as with all mavericks, he gravitates towards film roles that are sometimes glorified versions of cameos.

In his ideal world, designer, director, writer and actors would come to rehearsals with nothing decided and they would all have a great big glorious nit-picking session. He's taking the academic approach of a tutorial, influenced by his partner Rima.

The acting world knows it as the improvisation process that has been perfected by the idiosyncratic film-maker Mike Leigh. Actors, though they may curse the Method-acting process at times, love the challenge because they feel they have completely created their characters. No longer are they thought to be stupid, empty vessels into which tyrannical directors pour their fatuous fantasies.

‘There is a blurring between what I am asked to do as an actor, what I can do and what I'm actually like. It has very little to do with me as a person,' Rickman insisted in a
Drama
magazine interview.

He is a star by instinct on screen. Colonel Brandon was disappointing precisely because there was too little on which to work. Rickman still needs to bring something of himself, to project his own personality with that supreme gift of which his friend Stephen Davis speaks.

Alan Rickman is constantly at odds with himself. Given his eloquence and his status as an actor's adviser, he seems to be strangely inhibited about putting his thoughts down in permanent form. That one essay on Jaques, when he played the old poseur in Adrian Noble's
As You Like It
, is his only published work.

There is another side to him that has never been fully developed: the enticing prospect of an all-singing, all-dancing Alan Rickman to recall his days in
Guys And Dolls
in repertory theatre at Leicester. The longing to be as free as Fred Astaire has not left him.

He won an award at the 1994 Montreal Film Festival for Mesmer, the Evening Standard Best Actor award in 1991, Best Supporting Actor at the 1992 BAFTAS and an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Rasputin. But if he's to be more than the Gossard Wonderbra of acting, Alan Rickman must take control of himself and emerge as a force in his own right – not a flashy foil.

It is relatively easy to hide behind the lead actor, to peer slyly out and be subversive and steal the show. What is harder is to carry the show on your own shoulders; and even he couldn't do that with Mesmer.

One returns to the question raised by Jules Wright, in some ways his fiercest but fondest critic. She saw in him the potential to be a leader, but she had to fight against prejudice from those who thought him merely reactive rather than proactive. For all his insistence on living in the real world and not forgetting his roots, there is something rarefied about Alan Rickman. He tries not to be precious, but there are times when he takes himself just a little too seriously. And friends saying ‘He's too intellectual to be an actor' hardly help.

Certainly he feels self-conscious about being one of life's observers as opposed to participators; although he will bridle and insist, as he did with Michael Owen in the London
Evening Standard
in 1993, that he's always ‘got stuck in'.

Well, you can't get stuck in if you don't bang on doors to ask people to vote for your girlfriend because you feel your face is too famous. Wear a pair of glasses or a wig.

Deep down, it's not that he's shallow as the joke goes but that he has an atavistic working-class distrust of anything that is not quite a proper job. One that doesn't leave you with chilblains or ink on your fingers or warts on the palm of your hand. As he once said, acting is ‘mostly a great deal of fun'. Hence all the agonising as he endeavours to take everything seriously, tries to analyse what cannot be analysed, especially those strange instincts for performing that take over the body and which cannot be fully articulated.

The only time that Alan Rickman ever got his fingers filthy at work was when he took care to put dirt under his nails in order to play the Vicomte de Valmont. It was, as always with his artist's eye, an inspired detail. The man was, after all, nothing more than a filthy scoundrel, so he might as well look like the kind of rough trade that didn't wash properly.

Rickman is an endearing man, kindly and well intentioned, despite some spectacular sulks that make him seem like a bloody-minded, crotchety human being rather than some effete thespian godhead. Of the kind to be superstitiously touched in awe, as if he imparted some magic power. Alan Rickman made it when he was 42, so there's hope for the rest of us. If he sometimes sounds pompous, that goes with the territory in a looking-glass world.

There is no doubt that he felt damaged by the Riverside débâcle, which thrust him centre-stage in an impossible situation. He may recover and see fit to run his own theatre one day, but it would probably be a tiny studio one such as the Bush, which saved him from the emotional fall-out from the RSC. Meanwhile, he will go on making bigger and bigger movies, always holding something back and luring you further and further into the heart of his darkness or whatever else is on offer. He's a seductive actor.

They rightly call him standoffish, since he's so good at staging stand-offs. But he's also good at seducing, mainly the audience. He's always one step removed, as with all the great stars who play to their fans.

The world awaits Alan Rickman's first real screen love scene: but it will be conducted with the utmost decorum and erotic power, probably with all his and her clothes on. The Japanese would understand such a concept; indeed, they're a Rickman-friendly people. They understand his haughty elegance and delicate sense of style.

There may come a day when Rickman realises that not everything Dennis Potter wrote was wonderful; he may even try to do better himself. And
Mesmer
will disappear into the mists of history, like the man himself.

Whither Alan Rickman? Well, clearly age doesn't wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety of cinematic and theatrical moods. He has produced an impressively diverse portfolio so far, even if the public – being a perverse lot – warm to the criminal element most of all.

‘Alan used to get very cross with me at the Bush,' Jenny Topper told
GQ
magazine in 1992, ‘when I would suggest an actor for a part and ask his opinion. “Of course he can do it,” he would say. “He's an actor, isn't he?” He honestly believes any actor should be able to play any role.' What Clifford Williams calls ‘the fat Hamlet syndrome'.

On radio, he certainly did play many different roles: even the trademark voice has been different. On stage and television and film, he most emphatically has done so far. But always flavoured with that pungent aroma, Essence Of Rickman.

The difference between Claude Rains and Alan Rickman – both very feline, subtle actors of great finesse – is the latter's sexy electricity and physicality. There's an incandescence that a million light bulbs can't provide; an intensity, a magnetism that you can't fake. It's easier to simulate sincerity.

What he does with his power next could turn him into a greater star than Anthony Hopkins. It depends on how much Rickman really wants it.

The Faustian contract comes into the frame again as Alan broods about his next step, giving – as Peter Barnes puts it – the decision-making process the full Hamlet treatment. To be a star, or not to be a star? So long as he doesn't have to sell his soul to a damnable film. There have been very few flops in Rickman's movie career; but he's such a workaholic that he makes enough successes to cover up the failures.

If, however, he doesn't make time for more carefully-chosen, prestigious theatre work, then he will become the star turn in movies instead of the star. The man who is brought in to add a touch of class. It's a nice living, but it's a bit frivolous.

Alan Rickman has been the ultimate novelty act so far, a magician of the cinematic senses. There's still a hint of the dilettante about him; could he, like Anthony Hopkins, play Richard Nixon? Or do the crowds simply want him to provide the cabaret, to do one of his dazzling routines that brought the house down at Latymer Upper all those years ago?

Stephen Davis calls him an enigma, not least to his friends. He's also an enigma to himself, an honoured visiting alien in Hollywood who doesn't quite fit into the British theatrical scene either. But that's a problem facing all British actors who try to make it in America, given the embryonic nature of the film industry over here. They become strangers in their own land.

Alan Rickman has become best known for being the Autolycus of the acting trade, the picker and stealer, the grand larcenist
par excellence
.

Now he needs to make his indecision less final in order to march triumphantly on to the next stage.