Dear Alan…

J’aimerais vraiment arrêter de faire des articles « en hommage à … » mais  celui-ci me tient particulièrement à coeur.  69 ans, mon cher Alan, ce n’est pas un âge pour mourir. C’est trop jeune. Pas maintenant. 
C’est ce qu’on se dit. On se révolte. Et pourtant, Alan Rickman est décédé ce 14 janvier 2016. 

Alan Rickman est l’un des rares acteurs (heu…le seul) à qui j’ai un jour envoyé une carte d’anniversaire qui était en février.  Oui. Un jour, j’ai bien écrit cette carte et je l’ai postée. Une carte que j’avais moi-même illustrée plusieurs années auparavant. Et pour la petite histoire, j’avais reçu une réponse de son attachée de presse. 
Car Alan Rickman est (était, donc)  certainement le 2ème acteur dont je suis vraiment admirative — la 1ère place est depuis longtemps prise par Gary Oldman, ce n’est pas un secret — 
J’ai vu un nombre considérable de films dans lesquels il a joué, en V.O pour profiter de voix inimitable (et superbe).
Et voilà, je suis triste. C’est con. C’est humain, mais c’est con. Quand on ne connaît pas personnellement la personne qui vient de mourir. 
Bref. Les articles de journaux se succèdent:

Ici

Le Parisien

The Guardian

Ici

Ici

Ici

Long-time friend and frequent co-star Emma Thompson wrote: « Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye.

« What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was – his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him.

Sir Ian McKellen, who appeared with Rickman in the 1996 TV movie Rasputin, wrote on Facebook:

« There is so much that is matchless to remember about Alan Rickman. His career was at the highest level, as actor on stage and screen and as director ditto. His last bequest of his film A Little Chaos and his indelible performance as Louis 14th, should now reach the wider audience they deserve.

« Beyond a career which the world is indebted to, he was a constant agent for helping others. Whether to institutions like Rada or to individuals and certainly to me, his advice was always spot-on. He put liberal philanthropy at the heart of his life.

 

« He and Rima Horton (50 years together) were always top of my dream-list dinner guests. Alan would by turns be hilarious and indignant and gossipy and generous. All this delivered sotto, in that convoluted voice, as distinctive as Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Alec Guinness, Alastair Sim or Bowie, company beyond compare.

« When he played Rasputin, I was the Tzar Nicholas. Filming had started before I arrived in St Petersburg. Precisely as I walked into the hotel-room, the phone rang. Alan, to say welcome, hope the flight was tolerable and would I like to join him and Greta Scacchi and others in the restaurant in 30 minutes? Alan, the concerned leading man. On that film, he discovered that the local Russian crew was getting an even worse lunch than the rest of us. So he successfully protested. On my first day before the camera, he didn’t like the patronising, bullying tone of a note which the director gave me. Alan, seeing I was a little crestfallen, delivered a quiet, concise resume of my career and loudly demanded that the director up his game.

« Behind his starry insouciance and careless elegance, behind that mournful face, which was just as beautiful when wracked with mirth, there was a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero, unassuming but deadly effective.

« I so wish he’d played King Lear and a few other classical challenges but that’s to be greedy. He leaves a multitude of fans and friends, grateful and bereft. »

C’est un sentiment étrange, quand même, de me dire: « Voilà,  je ne le verrais plus dans un nouveau film, seulement dans les anciens ».