"Oh, I don't mind," he says in a gentle tone, delicately brushing the insect away while making sure not to injure the creature. "Go on, fly away," he tells it tenderly.

It's conclusive proof that the actor who thought nothing of annihilating innumerable humans in such films as Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in real life would not hurt a fly.

Of course, while Rickman is best known for his villainous characterizations, he has had equal success in portraying sensitive, sympathetic sorts in films like Truly, Madly, Deeply and Sense and Sensibility. And now, he takes on another persona, this time assuming a role behind the camera. As the director of The Winter Guest, Rickman tells the tale of four pairs of people and their perspectives on life.

Set in a small Scottish town on the coldest day in history-so cold the sea has frozen over-The Winter Guest's central focus is the contentious yet loving relationship between a mother and daughter, played by real-life mother and daughter Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson. Intertwined into their account are the stories of a teenage couple (Gary Hollywood and Arlene Cockburn) falling in love; two 12-year-old boys (Douglas Murphy and Sean Biggerstaff) embarking on adventures; and two 65-year-old women (Sheila Reid and Sandra Voe) whose hobby is attending funerals of people they don't know. "You're there with [these characters] looking at life through generations," Rickman synopsizes. "And if that sounds a little somber, it shouldn't, because I hope that a lot of it is very funny."

The material itself was commissioned by Rickman after many conversations with Lindsay Duncan, one of his co-stars in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, about her relationship with her mother. Rickman brought some of the ideas that came from these anecdotes to writer Sharman Macdonald, who scripted a stage version, which premiered in England in 1995 and which Rickman directed with Phyllida Law starring.

"When the notion for the piece came," Rickman recalls, "Sharman was the first person I thought of who should write it. I knew that it was her because of the fact that I had read her first play (When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout) when I was on a script panel at one of London's fringe theatres, and I'd recommended that it should be done. So it's sort of a full-circle thing.

"There's quite a lot of full circles in this piece," Rickman muses, "what with Phyllida not being able to do the play until the time when we did it, because she'd been nursing her own mother and she couldn't do any theatre. And then the absolute moment I rang her to ask her if she would read it was when she was available to do theatre again. And then the fact that when the notion of the film came up, it so happened that the circle was turning and it was exactly the right time for Emma. Five years earlier and she would have been too young."

Having a natural mother-daughter rapport already established with Law and Thompson was a boon, says Rickman, while acknowledging that "it might have been a nightmare. I can think of a few mother-daughter relationships that might not have worked at all on film. They might have been horribly competitive, or their real-life relationship might have been incredibly complicated to shake off in order to play a relationship that isn't theirs. As it happened, that wasn't the case. They're very different people, but they're very complementary. And they both have a huge amount of respect for each other as actors. And truth be told, after a while, you forget that they're mother and daughter, because they're two actors, and it would be an insult to treat them in any way other than as two actors. It's only really when you get to the editing room and suddenly in a shot, you get an echo of two profiles, or you see how fluid they are with each other in a scene where they're close, and the body language gives their relationship away. And then you realize how much of a bonus it has been."

Reflecting on his feature directing debut, Rickman likens the filmmaking process to "an animal with many legs, and you keep finding another pair that you haven't put shoes on. It's a fantastically rewarding job," he adds, "but of course you're not aware of that at the time. When people say, `Do you enjoy it?', you kind of look back and think, `Now, was there a moment where I had time to say, "Am I enjoying this?"

What Rickman is currently enjoying is the advance positive buzz from the Venice and Montreal film festivals. "I'm very happy that when people go and see it, it means a lot to them personally," he comments. "When the film ends, the conversation begins with the audience, and that's a new one every night it plays."

Rickman doesn't have any more directorial projects lined up at the moment, but he says he's "sure I will do it again if and when there is a piece of writing that suggests itself. But it will always be based on the quality of the writing. And so now I will act." His next role will be another typecasting-buster: He'll be playing an angel in Kevin Smith's ethereally-tinged comedy Dogma. "The greatest thing is to be able to do something out of the blue that you couldn't have predicted and is free of any preconceptions. It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising."

When asked if he's happy with the evolution of his career, Rickman replies pragmatically, "There's no point in not being, really. Because it's what it is. Chaotic, I suppose. But there's a line in the film when Phyllida says, `You've got to open up your heart and let chaos in.' So maybe that's a lesson that I've had to learn."