Alan Rickman died on January 14, 2016, but just seven months before his death, he opened up about seeing his young Harry Potter costars thrive as adults.
“I think it’s a relief as much as anything else,” Rickman said of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint‘s success in a June 2015 episode of Josh Horowitz‘s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “You watch that situation and as much as I was only doing it for seven weeks, they were doing it for 52 weeks. This was their life from 12 to 22. And you would watch it from the sidelines at times and throw the odd lifeline in because there was so little time for that.”
Rickman, who died of pancreatic cancer at age 69, played Severus Snape in all eight Harry Potter films from 2001 to 2011, and he kept in touch with Radcliffe after filming concluded.
“It’s only in recent years that, for example, I’ve managed to sit down in a cafe in New York with Daniel,” Rickman continued in the interview. “At one point, he was down the road at one theater and I was up the road in another. Huge pride to go to see him in the musical [How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying]. How dare he be dancing as well as the New York dancers? Because he worked at it.”
Once a Hogwarts student, always a Hogwarts student — and the Harry Potter cast’s frequent reunions prove that. In 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone hit theaters, introducing the world to Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, who played the three lead characters from J.K. Rowling‘s novels: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione […]
It wasn’t until recently that Radcliffe heard Rickman’s words. Horowitz played the clip at an April 2024 “Happy Sad Confused” recording with Radcliffe in support of Merrily We Roll Along (for which Radcliffe won his first Tony Award).
“I was so intimidated by Alan Rickman. How can you not be by that voice?” Radcliffe, now 35, said after watching the clip of his late costar. “Even hearing that voice you forget quite how low it was until it echoes through you. I was so intimidated by him for the first three movies. I was terrified by him and was like, ‘This guy hates me.’ Somewhere along the line, he saw that I really wanted to do this and work at it.”
Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis on July 11, 2011, in New York City. Getty Images
He added that Rickman was particularly supportive of his theater career on both Broadway and London’s West End. “He cut short a vacation in Canada to come and see me in Equus,” Radcliffe said. “He saw every piece of stage work I did when he was alive. He would take me out afterwards and we would talk about it. He was one of the first people to say, like, ‘You should look at voice coaching and Alexander technique and all this stuff.’ He was like, ‘You’re probably not going to get this otherwise, so you should just investigate all this stuff.’ I am so lucky. To hear him say that is really lovely. Thank you for showing me that.”
While Rickman called Radcliffe a “phenomenal” performer in the 2015 podcast, that wasn’t always how he felt. In his personal journals, published in 2022’s Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, he recalled seeing Radcliffe become more professional during Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
“He’s so concentrated now. Serious and focused — but with a sense of fun,” Rickman’s May 2003 entry reads of the third movie. “I still don’t think he’s really an actor but he will undoubtedly direct/produce. And he has such quiet, dignified support from his parents. Nothing is pushed.”
Obviously, that changed — Radcliffe has said on several occasions that he didn’t determine he wanted to be an actor post-Potter until the fifth film — and the younger actor didn’t mind hearing the bad along with the good. He even appreciated Rickman’s suggestion.
“I would love to [try] definitely directing,” Radcliffe said on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in November 2022. “Producing seems like all the hard parts of the industry without any of the fun, so I don’t really have interest in doing that.”
Radcliffe added, “All the stuff Alan wrote was very lovely and nostalgic reading. Like, from his comments about us, being like, ‘These kids need to learn their lines. That’s kind of a nightmare right now.’ All of that stuff through to us meeting when I was over here [in NYC] when I was doing a play. It was very, very sweet to read all that.”
Rickman is survived by wife Rima Horton.
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