Alan Rickman on the characteristics of Severus Snape in the last Harry Potter
Joe Rowling lays out such a kind of sure roadmap. You know, there what's right and what's wrong. You know what he wears, sort of. You know what his hair is like. You're told that he never really raises his voice above... He doesn't really shout that much. So there are rules to play and once you live inside those rules and then you are as focused as he is, in many ways it plays itself. Because the situations are so strong. And her grasp of her narrative is so kind of iron clad, that it's not so much as what you choose to do as not disobeying it I think.
I'm in the same position as everybody else. You know, I would read the books as they came out. And I would think: oh, alright, ok. This is what happens now is it. Fine. But you always knew there was an agenda. It was a question of what was that agenda going to turn out to be. That meant it's somebody who's very concentrated. You know that he lives a solitary kind of existence. You're not quite sure what the details of that are. But, he doesn't have much of a social life. And he's only got one set of clothes, clearly. Which last quite well.
It's been a complete privilege really. To be part of this. And that is what we all are is part of this enormous brave undertaking of Joe's at the beginning. And then, all the Davidson and all the directors. And Warner Brothers. To actually sort of dare to do it.
