What sort of family do you come from?
[Long silence] I never talk about my home life. I think it's unfair on one's family to see themselves written about. They have their lives to live and why should they be dragged into this?

I don't want to drag anyone anywhere. I just want to know a bit about your background.
My whole life's been lived in West London - born, schooled, art-schooled, drama-schooled.

Well, that's a start. I know you worked as a graphic artist for three years before deciding to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when you were 27. Why the sudden switch?
It never felt like a sudden switch to me. The curse of our times is that you are supposed to decide your life at 16 and stick to that.

Is the kind of world conjured up by the amateur theatricals in An Awfully Big Adventure something you're familiar with?
Well, I was in rep, you know. When I left drama school you had to do 40 weeks in repertory before you got your Equity card. That was in the days when the reps were funded and they could afford to have big companies, so you spent six months to a year in each company for the first two or three years.

What were you like back then?
I was just so relieved to finally be doing the job that I probably should have been doing earlier - that I was just enjoying myself. Also it really was a question of feeling fortunate to get a job at all, and it was practical. You were hired for a season and you just got on with it, really, so as an assistant stage manager at the Manchester Library Theatre I was playing the inquisitor of St Joan and then walking off stage to haul up my own cross and put the kettle on [he breaths hard out of his nose in a kind of apology for a laugh]. Very grand one minute and the lowest of the low the next.

Was that a healthy thing?
Of course, because you get a chance to make a prat of yourself in public and you grow muscles from that. It's terrible that actors today get less and less opportunity to get it wrong, and that so much is at stake. You need to be ready for it when the opportunity comes and I'm just grateful that I had those years from the theatre. Theatre is still the gymnasium where you learn acting.

You've said that when you read the part for An Awfully Big Adventure you knew immediately how to play it.
Well, I didn't know how the lines would come out, but I knew who he was - it's that romantic streak that maybe everybody's got in them where you wish that at some point in life you'd had the option to live off the back of a motorbike or something like that with just a small bag of belongings. It's the stick-with-the-spotted-handkerchief streak in everybody. I knew who he was because there's definitely that part of him in me.

Have you ever just taken off and sailed into the wild blue yonder?
You sort of do it all the time, if you're lucky enough to be involved in film. Every trip to Heathrow is a bit like that. It's quicker and you're not hitching by the roadside, but I love moving off into the unknown. I was filming in the Australian outback a few years ago [playing a villain in the Tom Selleck western Quigley Down Under] and I absolutely understood what Aboriginals mean by walkabout - the pull of a landscape. I do respond to that.

Are some characters closer to you than others?
That's for other people to say, really. I always view them as completely separate entities. You use yourself in everything you do, but at the same time you've got to have a very clear idea of another person. Otherwise I don't see how you can hand yourself over to it. He's not me. And also perhaps at particular times in your life you recognise certain parts as being closer to you now than they might have been five years ago. But no, every part has to have its own life to me - it isn't just me wiping myself across a stage or screen.

What was your greatest fear when you were making An Awfully Big Adventure?
That I'd fall off the bike. And I did. I only had one lesson of 20 minutes, and it was like riding a live animal. This was not a machine under me; it had a will and a mind. You couldn't tell what it was going to do. It would move not at all gently from trot to gallop and then full-stop, which is not great when they're saying "Rolling" and stuff like that. And I did come off it once. Mike Newell stepped in to help.

When I saw Mike Newell directing Into The West, rather than get angry, he would stalk off like Basil Fawlty...
We saw him shout at the clouds one day. He shouted at the sun, like Basil, and the car and the tree. It's very similar. He's a great director.

Was yours a smooth transition from acting to directing your first play?
No! It was troubled from the very first day. And the main trouble is that as an actor you've got too many memories of horrible rehearsals. I don't know what to compare it to, really. It's a very good text, I had fantastic actors and a wonderful designer, so in a way I feel as though it passed through me - a bit like an enema [Rickman laughs out loud]. So it was good to be tested, to say, "Well, I've had some miserable experiences in rehearsal rooms and why were they miserable? And now let's try not to make the same mistake."

How did you approach directing?
The play makes the rules. This play is about couples who swim in and out of focus so...

Do you hope to direct more, or are you at heart an actor?
I think it's unnecessary to make a decision like that. This is to do with [Rickman's lip curls] journalism, not with me.

But isn't it also to do with the idea that in order to be really good at something you have to be wholly absorbed by it?
One thing I will say - my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It's an inverse equation, if that's the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.

What matters to you about your work?
That people believe it. That's really all Everything is handed over to that. If people don't buy it then I think you've failed.

Do you read your reviews?
Not any more. Too painful.

Is that because you don't care or because you care too much?
Well, in film there's nothing much you can do about it. The trouble with reading your reviews in theatre is that you just see those words, whether they're good or bad, about a certain moment and [then] you see those words every time you come to it. And I think you have to guard your innocence in the theatre. Fortunately or unfortunately in cinema there's nothing you can do about it, it's finished. Take it or leave it.

Have you ever as a result of bad reviews simply wanted to disappear, like Stephen Fry, from public view?
The thing is that you may present one thing to the world, or people make their judgments and they get out their rubber stamps, but it may not be the truth. So when your vulnerabilities and sensitivities say, "Oi, pay attention," it often comes as a surprise to people who have assumed you are not that.

If you had to choose between one and the other, where would you go - theatre or film?
That would be very hard, because it depends what kind of theatre you're talking about. Theatre to me, in order to be of any value, has to keep reinventing itself, so I wouldn't be able to predict what type of theatre that would be. Film, of course, takes you all over the world - while it's still here - and so it's a terribly difficult trade-off. I really enjoy both of them and I really think they feed off each other. I think whatever I do on stage is more focused because of what I've learned on film - you have to change and narrow all the energies down for film - and theatre helps your concentration. It's the discipline.

Do you feel the need to reinvent yourself as an actor?
I think you should try to stay in touch with yourself, which is maybe the same thing. And that means as far as I'm concerned I am the sum of myself mentally, physically and emotionally, and that's connected with the life I live as a person, not just thinking of myself as an actor. Whatever I am as an actor is as a result of who I am as a person, what I think and do. My life changes every day, so hopefully my work does.

Do you have a theory of acting?
I do - but I wouldn't ever talk about it because it looks stupid in print. It's not that I'm being closed. But you interrupt your instincts by explaining. I took one look at Stanislavsky and closed the book very quickly.

Your most recent stage role was Hamlet. How do you renew Hamlet?
[Rickman's jaw drops slowly, hangs there for a while, then slowly lifts again] Well ...when did it get old?

Yes, of course. A great play is always new. Um...what qualities do you admire in an actor?
It's unnameable, but one thing an actor has to be is a fit instrument. The thing that wanders out of a tube station and onto the stage, I mean, it's not in a case like a violin. An actor has to protect himself a bit - and yet be very open. To be both fit and open is a hard balance to achieve - in fact it's impossible. I hate putting this into words because it sounds so...wanky.

Are you a fit instrument?
Less fit than I was.

But you are a member of a health club. Do you ever go?
I go in secret and dutifully bore myself rigid on the machines. My problem with Hamlet was how the hell do you do this thing physically, how do you breathe it? Not only is the play very long but you discover that this bastard Shakespeare has put three huge soliloquies one almost directly after another.

One of the things which is appealing about you is your misfit quality, that you are a maverick...
Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.

Let's put it another way - you could be a huge star but seem to resist the road to iconic status.
There's no master plan. It's not calculated, Every choice is taken on its own terms. For example I went on from filming Mesmer, which was difficult, to doing Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure, which was a breeze. They were two very different experiences.

Do you ever hanker after the kind of stardom that Hugh Grant, your Awfully Big Adventure co-star, now has?
[Long, long pause] Just too busy getting on with it. Besides, I don't think it's a thing to hanker after - it just either happens or it doesn't and you just have to deal with it.

You've been called a scene stealer - admiringly, of course. Or a film stealer in the case of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Do you recognise this when you watch yourself on screen?
I don't enjoy watching myself on screen at all, so I don't know - all you ever see is how far away you are from what your imagination thought you were doing. That's why I don't like rushes. So that's a whole different relationship with my work. What I see is not what you see, so I don't know about that. The best kind of work is not competitive anyway.

Mike Newell said that before he started shooting An Awfully Big Adventure he'd been thinking, Oh God, I'm going to work with Alan Rickman, he's so choosy, how can I ever live up to the fact that he's chosen me?
Like he doesn't choose what he's going to do? [His eyes open wide] Like I don't go onto the set thinking, Oh God, I must do my best because this is Mike Newell who's had this world hit with Four Weddings and a Funeral? Apart from the film business being all about the size of people's willies, we also swim in bucketloads of bullshit. There's plenty of people more difficult that me.

Like who?
Juliet Stevenson, for example. I would say that "difficult" means a highly intelligent human being who asks pertinent questions and tries to use her or himself to the fullest extent. Who says I'm difficult? Since I know I don't shout and scream about the size of my...

Willy?
I was going to say dressing room, or caravan on the set...then I can only assume it's about my approach to the work - in which case I don't mind being called difficult.

Does Hollywood still interest you?
Yes. I'm not stupid. I know that we would not be sitting here doing this without Hollywood. It's Hollywood which puts you on the bigger map.

Isn't that a slightly melancholy fact?
It's not melancholy, It's tragic, appalling. How much longer do people have to bleat on about throwing away a British and European film industry before it's properly organised? It's awful that we all have to toddle off to Hollywood.

What did you make of your time in Hollywood?
Well, I learned a lot, a huge amount and I was grateful for the opportunities that America gave me, and America can still come up with a movie like, say...Baghdad Cafe off the top of my head. [Actually, that was German, Ed.] [[Actually, there was an American remake - Karina]] The independent spirit can still function in amongst all the other stuff. Yes, it's further down the road, but I have to say that's the place that said, "OK, come here, do it. We know you've never done it before, but that's OK." We don't do that here.

What about directing a movie yourself?
Mmmm, yeah. It would depend on the script. There are certain scripts where you think I could not direct my way out of that one but this one...and I don't know what that's about. You just recognise or read something and pictures start to form, you read other things and they don't. Or they're pictures you don't want to look at.

Are you drawn to particular kinds of stories?
I think it's important that everybody can have their own relationship to a story and so I enjoy stories when the rules aren't laid down too strongly, where people can make their own decision about characters and how they relate to it. I enjoy being involved in work that tests the audience, that they're not just passive, where you know that once you've finished your contribution, it's not over, that when the film is being shown there's going to be another conversation going on between the film and the audience. I enjoy pulling the rug out from those kind of expectations of thinking, Oh, I know what this is going to be like. It's very enjoyable to say, "Really?" Not in a threatening way...It's just that the common denominator is getting hammered into the ground of late and that cinema or theatre more and more can become just a kind of panacea. It's worth more than that.

What have you seen recently that you've enjoyed?
Well, the last two things that I saw are actually good examples of that: The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [recent London production by Theatre de Complicite], and Eat Drink Man Woman - both beautifully told stories, completely different energies behind them, one quite ethnic and one very detailed, but very, very human. I suppose that's what we're in danger of losing, anything that reminds us that we're human beings.

Ultimately, do you find acting a limiting profession?
It shouldn't be and it needn't be, but fortunately - and unfortunately - you are at the mercy of other people's imaginations as well as your own. All you're asking is for your own imagination to be given the runaround and to discover things and reveal things that maybe you didn't know were there. You're a vessel, you're a channel. It's not as though you can plan it all, so therefore it's wonderful when you meet individuals who challenge that imagination because of their imaginations or because they cast you imaginatively. A lot of the time people just want you to repeat things and that's where acting can become very limiting, when you're asked to put the record on again.

How do you feel about what's happened to Mesmer?
I had a letter today from a German director whom I was supposed to be working with on another brave, independent movie which in the end they couldn't get together. He finished his letter with, "If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust". That seems to be relevant. And it was ironical to be at Dennis Potter's memorial service one day and in a courtroom the next, on both occasions saying the same lines in support of his work.

What are your immediate plans?
The trouble is, it's all going on between agents. The dotted line hasn't been signed [on my next role] so I probably can't say anything about that in case I end up not doing it and somebody else does and then they read it in PREMIERE and think, "I thought I was playing that." [Rickman subsequently did sign on the dotted line to co-star with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant in Sense And Sensibility, to be directed by Eat Drink Man Woman's director Ang Lee.]

So what's the buzz in being an actor?
[Rickman signs loudly] ...Something to do with a collective experience combined with a sense of one's own power? There can be a huge buzz in acting, but the thing is ... the moments of greatest buzz are frequently followed by a very swift kick in the guts or smack to the side of the head.

No more questions.
Torture over, thank God.