ALAN RICKMAN - WHY IS THIS SUAVE, MELLIFLOUS ENGLISHMAN ALWAYS THE BAD GUY? by Karen Moline (Mirabella)
Traduzione
"Because he has portrayed monsters," said a contemporary of Choderlos de Laclos, who wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses, people will have it that he is one himself." The uninitiated, therefore, may be forgiven should they assume that Alan Rickman is as staggeringly nasty as the villains that he has so indelibly brought to life - Valmont in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Liaisons, the terrorist leader in Die Hard and the super-sadistic political interrogator in Closetland.
"I'm actually quite a nervous person," Rickman insists. He might better be characterized as regally leonine and very guarded, a man who watches and waits and chooses his words as carefully as he does his roles. He also understands that stillness combined with flashes of droll wit delivered in a mellifluous baritone can create an aura of seduction as undeniable as it is un-self-conscious.
These qualities are conspiring to make Rickman an irrefutable presence in Hollywood. He followed Closetland with the romantic English comedy Truly, Madly, Deeply but is returning to villainous form this month with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner's Robin Hood saga, in which Rickman plays the Sheriff of Nottingham. "We're into black magic, so this is like no sheriff you've ever seen," he says with a crafty grin. "It's another bad, bad guy, but it's funny."
His satanic sheriff may evoke a sly frisson in anyone lucky enough to have seen Rickman's definitive portrayal of the supremely wicked yet surprisingly sexy Valmont on stage. And the stage is where Rickman would like to be. He says he's less interested in being a Hollywood star than in returning to theater in London's West End and resuming the classical roles that have earned him accolades there.
"I'm still an English stage actor," Rickman explains. "who never expected to be in the movies. Film work has given me a different kind of confidence, and I would like to see how that manifests itself in the theater. There are certain parts in the classics I'd hoped to do that are leaving me because of my age" - Rickman is in his early forties - "but I still have faith in other people's imaginations. Somewhere out there are people who will sling me something so much from left field that I would never have thought of it."
Edited by chiara53 - 20/6/2022, 17:22
