Alan Rickman - Something the Lord Made - Part 2

Alan Rickman: 'Harry Potter end is a cause for celebration'
Alan Rickman has said that the end of the Harry Potter films is "a cause for celebration".

The 65-year-old, who plays Severus Snape in the movies, insisted that JK Rowling's story reached a satisfying conclusion and that the end of the series is not a bad thing.

"The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end," he told the Los Angeles Times.

"The ending of this story was quite popular and beautifully judged by Jo Rowling and [director] David Yates, so it's not a cause for sadness; it's a cause for celebration that it was rounded off so well."

Rickman went on to say that the films played a large part in his life for years.

"It was a punctuation mark in my life every year because I would be doing other things but always come back to that and I was always aware of my place in the story even as others around me were not," he said.

Rickman is currently starring on Broadway in the musical comedy Seminar.

In May, the actor praised Rowling in a letter he penned shortly after finishing his work on the Harry Potter films.

Harry Potter may be one of the most successful franchises of all time but it seems the films have failed to gain recognition at prestigious film awards.

Warner Bros has now reportedly launched a campaign to get the final instalment Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part Two included in the nominations for this year's Oscars.

According to the Daily Telegraph the studio is pushing for academy members to vote for the film in 12 categories, including best picture, best director for David Yates and best actor and actress for Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson

Speaking about the possibility of Alan Rickman being nominated as best supporting actor for playing Professor Severus Snape.

Daniel Radcliffe said: "I don’t think there is going to be another performance from an actor in a supporting role that is so powerful.

No. 8: “Seminar” Alan Rickman plays a crass, pugnacious novelist-turned-tutor to a group of four budding writers in Theresa Rebeck’s wonderful play about the pain of creating art. But leave the “Harry Potter” fans at home: The only magic is in the script, and the only thing that disappears is the shirt on one of the actresses.

The Prince's Tale in the book moved me...the film version broke my heart.

FROM JERRY: Here's wishing a very Happy New Year to all. To Mary Ellen, who got to meet Alan Rickman and I didn't, and Gloria Puel and Wayne Lawless, and to our illustrious leader, Gloria Lillibridge, a wish for a New Year that excells in laughter and love and happiness.

To wind down our year-end coverage, Broadway.com looked to our readers over New Year's weekend, asking you to pick your favorite show of 2011. And the winner? With a whopping 31% of votes, Theresa Rebeck's sharp comedy Seminar, starring a quintet of stage talents led by Alan Rickman, has been crowned the fan favorite of the year.

Recently it seems that the studio has shifted its focus slightly to pin a last minute Oscar hope on Alan Rickman in the Best Supporting Actor field. Rickman’s character, Professor Severus Snape, is the most inherently conflicted in the adaptation and Rickman has embraced Snape’s nuanced motivations with increasing depth as the cinematic depictions have evolved. He understood what followers of J.K. Rowling’s creation have always known: as the kids age, the themes, content and severity of the stakes evolve. There were always layers present, but Rickman’s portrayal culminated in what was, for me, the most emotionally evocative sequence in the final film: the reveal of Snape’s role as a double agent, his tortured, unrequited and steadfast love for Harry Potter’s mother Lily and ultimately, his demise.

In a sense, Rickman was playing a character that for a long period of time even the producers and directors didn’t fully comprehend. “I was always aware of my place in the story even as others around me were not,” the actor said in a recent interview with the LA Times Hero Complex. Author J.K. Rowling made a rare confidant of Rickman at an early stage in the cinematic adaptations when she revealed the scope and scale of Snape’s role in the larger tale in order to give Rickman the necessary tools to create an accurate portrait. “It was quite amusing, too, because there were times when a director would tell Alan what to do in a scene and he would say something like, ‘No I can’t do that – I know what is going to happen and you don’t,’” said producer David Heyman in the same interview.

For Potter lovers it is a fascinating exercise to go back and re-watch the films with the knowledge of Rickman’s foresight in mind. You will likely find new meanings in the variance of his expression and the bewildering nature of both his and Dumbledore’s choices and respective responses to Harry.

There is certainly a case to be made for a Best Supporting Actor nod for Rickman. For some, Ralph Fiennes’s Voldemort was the showstopper. But there are two moments that left an indelible impression on me in the penultimate and closing installments. The first provided the clearest sense of Yates’s directorial voice: Harry and Hermione dancing in the tent (a bittersweet, quiet act of rebellion and willful embrace of life and the present); the second is the aforementioned disclosure of Snape’s purpose and identity.

Rickman, in some ways, had more to dig into than any other cast member (other than perhaps Dumbledore, had they chosen to highlight the harsh lessons of his misguided youth). More than that, Rickman never gave the impression that he knew he was in a children’s film, or that he was particularly concerned with the genre. Snape evolved as the story needed him to, becoming richer, ever more heartbreaking and stronger, even as his frailties were unveiled.

We have a very special contest going down right now on the GLA Blog. Here’s the deal. There’s a new comedy on Broadway called “Seminar” that stars none other than Alan Rickman (bad guy in Die Hard, cheating husband in Love Actually, and, oh yeah, Snape in Harry Potter) as a writing instructor. Time Out New York gave it 5 stars and said Alan Rickman is hilarious in it and basically the man, which, naturally, we already knew. We’re giving away tickets on this blog. Keep reading if you want to win a pair!

THE GIVEAWAY: This contest goes through EOD, January 9, 2012. With the help of Serino/Coyne in NYC, we are giving away four (4) free pairs of tickets to random commenters. The show itself is on an open-ended run, so winners are allowed to cash in their tickets for anytime in Jan – March 2012 — so you should be able to find a date that works for you.

Just think: if James and Lily had only chosen Rickman as their secret-keeper, they would probably still be alive right now. You go, Snape.

Lady StarChilde: This was the reply sent to me from The Drama Book Shop by email: "Seminar is not yet published for sale. It will be published, but we don't know exactly when--it can take up to a year after a production closes on Broadway for the play to be... published. You can check back in a few months to see if it has come out. And when it does come out, you can certainly purchase it from us with a credit card from Australia, and we can ship it out to you there--we ship everywhere in the world."

I didn’t see this, but a woman told me that he did stop to pose for a picture with a 7 year old boy. The girl who was next to him (who had been refused a picture) protested: “Why does he get a picture and I don’t!?!?”

To which Alan calmly replied: “Because he’s tiny.”

Ah, classic Alan Rickman!

Smith is changing plans and will make his upcoming ice-hockey comedy, "Hit Somebody," one movie instead of two.

The "Clerks" director said last summer that the movie was too long to be a single movie. But in his Twitter feed Thursday, he said, "now gonna make one big movie instead." In a subsequent tweet, he added, "Makes more sense, anyway: the movie's about taking one, good shot."

Smith said he plans to start shooting the movie in June -- instead of July or September, as had previously been expected -- and that he wants to premiere it at Sundance in 2013.

"Hit Somebody" stars Nicholas Braun in the lead role, as a hockey player named Buddy McCracken. The cast also includes John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Alan Rickman, Kevin Pollak and Ralph Garman, who co-hosts the podcast "Hollywood Babble-On" with Smith.

Over in the actor’s corner, the most interesting nomination has to be for Alan Rickman, who has been longlisted in the Supporting Actor category for his sterling work as Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Wow - I never fail to be impressed by how articulate Alan is in interviews. Over an hour, and not one "erm" or "umm". He's so polished and spontaneous at the same time. Remarkable! I loved his t-shirt slogan idea: "Less is more!" Very droll.