ALAN RICKMAN (1946-2016)
There is so much that is matchless to remember about Alan Rickman. His career was at the highest level, as actor on stage and screen and as director ditto. His last bequest of his film “A Little Chaos” and his indelible performance as Louis 14th, should now reach the wider audience they deserve.
Beyond a career which the world is indebted to, he was a constant agent for helping others. Whether to institutions like RADA or to individuals and certainly to me, his advice was always spot-on. He put liberal philanthropy at the heart of his life. He and Rima Horton (50 years together) were always top of my dream-list dinner guests. Alan would by turns be hilarious and indignant and gossipy and generous. All this delivered sotto, in that convoluted voice, as distinctive as Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Alec Guinness, Alastair Sim or Bowie, company beyond compare.
When he played Rasputin, I was the Tzar Nicholas. Filming had started before I arrived in St Petersburg. Precisely as I walked into the hotel-room, the phone rang. Alan, to say welcome, hope the flight was tolerable and would I like to join him and Greta Scacchi and others in the restaurant in 30 minutes? Alan, the concerned leading man. On that film, he discovered that the local Russian crew was getting an even worse lunch than the rest of us. So he successfully protested. On my first day before the camera, he didn’t like the patronising, bullying tone of a note which the director gave me. Alan, seeing I was a little crestfallen, delivered a quiet, concise resume of my career and loudly demanded that the director up his game.
Behind his starry insouciance and careless elegance, behind that mournful face, which was just as beautiful when wracked with mirth, there was a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero, unassuming but deadly effective.
I so wish he’d played King Lear and a few other classical challenges but that’s to be greedy. He leaves a multitude of fans and friends, grateful and bereft.
— Ian McKellen, London, 14 January 2016
Photo: Ian McKellen, Greta Scacchi and Alan Rickman at the Golden Globe Awards, 1997
Having a wonderful time touristing in #russia #redsquare #stbasilscathedral
Perhaps you’ll recognize Ewan McGregor as Lumière and me as Cogsworth in this sneak peek at Disney’s live-action retelling of “Beauty and The Beast” opening in cinemas worldwide next spring. http://www.mckellen.com/cinema/beauty-and-the-beast/index.html
#ShakespeareLives at the Forbidden City in China. @BritishCouncil @BritishFilmInstitute #PlayYourPart
Good morning from #mumbai
First day of rehearsals for #NoMansLand UK Tour begins August
#tbt April 2000, Queenstown New Zealand not far from where we we were filming #lotr
I am excited about making my stage and television debut in #china tomorrow night. Watch out #Shanghai! @britishcouncil #shakespearelives
A peaceful #tbt to 2010 at home
The Dresser: “A triumph for Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen” — The Telegraph. I hope you’ll tune in Monday night at 9pm ET/PT for the US premiere on STARZ
Not the most difficult door I’ve had to open. Visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing
I hope you’ll enjoy our newly launched Shakespeare app #heuristicshakepearethetempest
See how it all ends … the @Vicious series finale that is … Sunday night at 8/7c on @PBS. It’s a world premiere and the US gets it first for a change. http://www.pbs.org/program/vicious/series-finale/ Not with a whimper but a reminiscence
Leo may have had to battle a CGI grizzly but on the set of “Mr Holmes,” as we filmed on a farm in East Sussex we contended with real live chickens, sheep, no-see-um bugs and … BEES!
I’m delighted to be celebrating my 77th birthday in #mumbai at the 7th Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival!
UK tour begins 3 August. NoMansLandThePlay.com
Tonight 9pm ET/PT on STARZ tune in or set your DVR for #thedresser with Anthony Hopkins, Emily Watson, Sarah Lancashire and me.
“The best time to drink champagne is before lunch.” (Briggs) In rehearsals for #nomansland
We had a full house in #shanghai for my talk #shakespearelives @britishfilminstitute @britishcouncil I loved it!
This is it! World premiere of Vicious series finale @pbsofficial tomorrow Sunday 8/7c
“Mr Holmes” opens in Japan today, March 18, 2016. The story of old Mr Holmes starts with him visiting Japan. There he meets Mt Umezaki played by the redoubtable Hiroyuki Sanada (Hiro to his friends and colleagues). Actually neither Hiro nor I filmed in the real Japan. Hiroshima was reconstructed by the River Thames in East London. I hope the audience in Japan will accept that film budgets don’t always permit distant locations.
I have visited Japan only once, when the National Theatre of Great Britain played in the Tokyo Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare is the staple diet – in a variety pf languages. I played as Shakespeare’s King Richard 111 (long before I filmed it) and as Kent in “King Lear” (long before I played the King himself in a later production). I spent a memorable day among the architectural delights of Kyoto but did not get to Hiroshima. The closest I’ve been to that city was on the banks of the River Thames in London!
http://gaga.ne.jp/holmes/
Don’t merely consider it, watch it on Starz Monday May 30.
Meet me in Coventry Garden Friday https://s.apple.com/dE0q4p7g4u
