Juliet Stevenson on Alan Rickman: He was more than an actor – he was an inspiration

Tribute: Juliet Stevenson speaks about former co-star Alan Rickman
Rex
Jennifer Ruby15 January 2016
The Weekender

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Juliet Stevenson has paid tribute to friend and co-star Alan Rickman following his death.

The British actress, who famously starred opposite Rickman in Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply, has described him as an ‘inspiration’ and ‘more than an actor’.

Speaking on BBC’s Newsnight, the 59-year-old said: “He was more than an actor, he was an inspiration to pretty much everyone on that crew as I’m sure he was on every crew really.

“The great gift of making that film with him – it was a very clever bit of casting by Anthony Minghella – because we had known each other a long time and I thought about him as a family member more than a friend even.”

“He was an incredibly inventive person to work with. Very, very creative. Thinking all the time about the bigger picture. He had his eye on everything.”

Stevenson added: “He could make you roar with laughter with a couple of words, he could be searingly insightful with just a line. He was very instinctive and a very intuitive person.

Alan Rickman - in pictures

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“He was a genuinely classless person – there were no hierarchies for his heart.

“He treated everyone with the same degree of courtesy and that’s one of the reasons he’s very, very loved. He had absolutely no snobbery at all. He saw the possibilities in everybody.”

Admitting that she’d been at his wife’s house before the programme, the actress said that she’d been sitting with his friends and family and sharing stories about him.

“We feel we’ve lost our leader, we’ve lost of king,” she said. “We all feel like we’ve lost the steering wheel in our car.”

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