Alan Rickman - Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries

APPENDIX: The Early Diaries

Alan Rickman kept occasional diaries from around 1974 to 1982 and then again, more fulsomely and regularly, from 1993 to the end of his life. What follows is a selection of extracts from those early diaries, which begin after he had graduated from RADA in 1974 and chart his work with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company, among others.

c. 1974

Fine acting always hits an audience with the force and oneness of the well-aimed bomb one is only aware of the blast or series of blasts at the time afterwards you can study the devastation or think about how a bomb is made. And yet no analogy suffices the chemistry is too variable to construct an equation: an actor is about the only artist whose instrument is himself. And his instrument is not just for practice and performance he has to place and use it in his life, too; has to construct a life in which to practise and present that instrument, and his only means is the instrument himself. Menuhin sounds a gong for dinner, he doesnt play it on his Stradivarius. The Stradivarius is polished and locked away in velvet. The actors instrument is fed intermittently and travels on tube-trains in the rush hour. Fine acting is a bloody miracle of chance, the most fragile blending of time, mood, talent and trust. Too often, all we present is an attempted repeat of a hazy memory of the once we thought we almost made it.

*

More and more I think youve either got it or you havent. What you can be taught is the recognition of having it and the attendant responsibility, or how best to cope without it. And that depends on whether the teacher has it or not. Its self-generating. The more you have, the more you seem to acquire, but unlike money, you dont know where it came from in the first place, and if you think you do, you havent got it anyway.

Manchester, March 1975

At one stage, here, there was a danger that my confidence had been crushed. Somehow, the experience has been survived and I stand now in a position of arrogant strength. Everything I believe in has been thickly reinforced, not through example so much as the lack of it. People here say all the right things and fail totally to put them on public display, because try as one might it is well-nigh impossible to do this thing were engaged in it needs many boring old-fashioned things like application and discipline to be in any sense revolutionary their complacency breeds only blindness. In the end, they dont want to see because it might bring them face to face with risk, danger, challenge, honesty, daring and the beautiful simplicity which comes from the act of giving yourself over to an image, an idea, a character, a play, an audience.

*

Actors are no more innately neurotic than anyone else, but from time to time their senses undergo an overhaul or two, and thus cleansed they are sent out back into the smog. Result: neurosis. Even if they dont get the overhaul, their possibilities are nearer the surface than with most people. Result: neurosis. (Fed through and by ego which is basically an unanswered mental tension, anyway.)

Constant encouragement is the vital food.

*

You can look at the lines on the page for hours on end, watch the meanings and inferences weaving in and out of the words. Speak them and theyve gone in an instance.

Leicester, August 1975

Type-casting is a deadly poison.

Acting can be ones life, but that life must be rich enough to support it.

Fight the temptation to disappear into your own subconscious.

Leicester, December 1975

Theatre is the only LIVING way to say here is you, here is me, this is what we do to each other, this is what we could do to each other. It is at once a celebration and a warning, a reminder and an encourager. So if needs be make it a shop, a bingo hall, a palace or a bus stop. Just make a strong but flexible framework and fill it with the right spirit. See what a child does with a box.

*

The thing inside me that keeps me going is like an arrow that begins somewhere in my gut and pushes upwards into my throat and brain. Other people call it self-confidence but that has not always been there, although the camouflages of doubt, question, insecurity, laziness etc., have given it different shapes. The blunts and blurs seem to have been mostly stripped away now, and it thrusts upward while Im trying to sort out some kind of target.

Sheffield, JanuaryMay 1976

What do I say about this time? A crucial time. Three big parts which have elicited from me some welcome heights and some fairly appalling depths. There must be a basic something which is right because while keeping my mind as open as I can, things are confirmed or developed never changed (from disillusionment or that creeping disease its a job).

July 1976

Piscean by birth piscean in everything I think and do. My life swims one way, my work the other and yet its the same breed. The ever-present objectivity the once-remove is invaluable to me as an actor (for the most part the great danger is lack of surprise, but I recognise that) and disastrous in relationships. Either I spend time keeping an even keel so as to avoid obstacles, or I get knotted up with watching, waiting, imposing. Will I ever just Let Be? Who puts this invisible telefoto lens over my eyes? It helps me to see and it makes me blind. What I enjoy as much as anything is to laugh from somewhere way down inside. And that begins to be like buried treasure.

Birmingham, October 1976

Sunday in Birmingham and a distracted sideways glance out of the window. Two women crossing the street towards a row of bollards on the other side, fronting a parade of shops. It reminds me of so many days, particularly Sunday, spent in the streets around my grandparents house, to all intents and purposes alone in that tin-kicking way that makes a brick wall become a thing of great comfort or menace so deeply do you look into it as you walk its length and breadth. And a flash of knowledge comes with this. That curious sensation I remember being with me all the time turns out not to be simple loneliness although Ive always felt different. It was just waiting. For now to arrive.

MayJune 1977

BirminghamLiverpoolZurichAmsterdamThe HagueRotterdamEindhovenCologne.

On the train to Bristol Old Vic, 1 September

Some opposing forces to think about while working.

The need to simultaneously hold on and let go.

The most inward emotions must move outwards.

*

This is my head. It thinks it talks it charms. It worries it laughs it hurts. It has a hundred wonderful tricks. I am proud of it.

This is my body. It is funny-looking. It malfunctions. It looks best in winter clothes. I have as little to do with it as humanly possible. Lucky for my body that I need it to chauffeur my head around. Otherwise out it would go.

Bristol Old Vic, November 1977

Finally, I came here driven either by fear or by unknown forces who, hacking paths through the jungle ahead of me, were unseen. None of the parts played here are approached with the animal joy that may contain the dangers of preconceived ideas. An agonising objectivity has been ever-present (and will prove to have been invaluable). Laertes, Ma Ubu and Uriah are all unfamiliar territories and bravery alone has not sufficed I need a guide to show me more rewarding routes, dangerous scenery. God knows what the next ten years will bring, but now I must seek out the experts; the brilliant, the open, the challenging ones. To take my objectivity and willingness to them and let them kick it up to the skies.

January 1978

The mere fact that it is difficult to write anything these days indicates the watershed that has been my time in Bristol. Two curiously conflicting qualities make themselves felt. One a numbness from the neck down through tapping the same unstocked reservoir that of blind aggression. Two a still more ruthless determination to be an ACTOR, not anybodys puppet, or at most walkie-talkie-doll. I am ultimately the servant only of the play (that, however, implies generosity to fellow actors and willing listener to directors) not of someones distorted view of my offstage persona.