Pardon My Rambling - Tumblr Posts

I’m really struggling to explain how I feel this evening. Alan Rickman was quite simply my idol. Growing up, I memorised all the words to his films, spent hours downloading obscure clips on a creaky old dial-up internet connection, read every article, tracked down his entire back catalogue on DVD. The Chap has always joked that Rickman was the first man in my life.

I think I’m mourning someone I never actually knew, and it’s the strangest feeling. I never met him, not really. I once bumped into him (actually bumped into him, ever observant, me) outside the Donmar Warehouse. I babbled incoherently at him and asked to shake his hand. Graciously, kindly, as though he hadn’t already been stopped at least fifty times that morning by twits like me, he held out his hand.

As well as being a truly great actor, he seemed to be a real gentleman. He believed that politics mattered. He knew that theatre and film could, maybe should, change the world. He taught me so much, without ever knowing. And I am so grateful to him.