Alan Rickman takes center stage in “Empire Magazine” big interview

The latest Empire Magazine has just been released, and Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) takes center stage in the big interview. In the interview, Alan talks about his most well-loved roles, as well as his upcoming new film, A Little Chaos, which he will be introducing later this month at the Febiofest International Film Festival.

Of course, Alan had to reflect on playing Severus Snape and the whole Potter experience.

He spoke about what it was like returning to the same character for so many years, what it was like to be on set, and how things changed:

It was like being in an army camp because the pressure on the producers was so intense. They had a clipboard for the stuff they had to hit every day. And sometimes there were 300 children on set. So you have to understand what you’re in the middle of. And it’s a military campaign to get the adult actors there because half of us were doing something else at the time. I don’t know how they got us all there. But over the course of [-] what[? -] ten, [twelve] years? Not only were there different directions but also, inevitably, the kids got older. You were watching them grow up.

Alan also reflected on the introduction of CGI, which changed the way that they made the films:

The CGI was getting more and more sophisticated, so whereas at the beginning we’d be off on a location, by the end we were in a pile of shitty old grass out [behind] the back of Leavesden with a football stadium of lights. There was a whole crew standing around not quite knowing what to do when Ralph (Fiennes) and I filmed our last scene because basically, it was down to a couple of actors acting. We never knew what was going to be put in around us because they could do it so beautifully by the end. So that kept you interested.

Finally, Alan spoke about the draw of Snape’s character and how the depth of the character appealed to him:

I suppose my character’s story was so complicated […] So there was that to guard, helped by the fact that whenever you showed up you’d button yourself into the hundreds of buttons and put the black contact lenses in, and then on would go the wig. Something happens to you when you have a very strong costume. You go inward. Those characters in Harry Potter are not lived through three dimensions. They are who they are. They each have a very strong outline. So it helps if the costume is in many ways that outline.

The full interview is available in the April 2015 edition of Empire Magazine, which is available now in all good newsagents across the UK. You can find out more about the magazine and the current edition here.

Make sure you go out and get the magazine so that you don’t miss out!