- Alan appeared at a preview for his film Bottle Shock in August 2008, where he took part in a Question and Answer session, along with director Randall Miller and producer J. Todd Harris.
- Alan was made a Companion by Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
- In June 2007, Alan appeared at Eastleigh in Reading Room reading a text specially commissioned by the late Anthony Minghella.
- Throughout his career Alan won 13 awards and had 14 nominations.
- Alan won the British Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991.
- In Alan's opinion the best line he have ever uttered in his career was: "May you both live forever!" to two people who'd just trounced him.
- In April 2005 Alan directed a play called "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and won the Theatre Goers' Choice Awards for best director.
- He is 11 years older than Timothy Spall, 12 years older than Adrian Rawlins and Gary Oldman, 17 years older than David Thewlis, and 21 years older than Geraldine Somerville. Nevertheless, the character that the six of them play in the Harry Potter films are meant to be at the same age and former classmates.
- Alan was J.K. Rowling's personal favorite to play Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
- His father passed away when Alan was only 8 years old.
- Alan is 6' 1" (1.85 m) tall.
- During his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live to promote the film Love Actually, after listening to Rickman describe the film, Kimmel declared "It sounds like a chick flick," to which the eloquent, elegant Rickman responded "It's also a dick flick," which left the normally smart-ass, talkative Kimmel speechless for a few moments as the audience erupted in startled laughter.
- Alan worked as the writer and director of The Winter Guest (1997) and also directed the play Desperately Yours.
- Alan has a long established career onstage and on British television.
- For the Edinburgh Festival he appeared in the following plays: The Devil Is an A**, and Measure for Measure (also at the Birmingham, Royal National Theatre and European tour), and the Brothers Karamozov (in Russia and Georgia).
- For the Royal Court Alan appeared in the following plays: The Seagull, The Grass Widow, and The Lucky Chance.
- For the Royal Shakespeare Company Alan appeared in the following plays: The Tempest, Love's Labour's Lost, Antony and Cleopatra, Captain Swing, Troilus and Cressida, As You Like It, Mephisto, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (also at the West End and Broadway). For the Royal National Theatre he appeared in Antony and Cleopatra.
- Alan performed on Mike Oldfield's CD Tubular Bells II (1992), credited as the Master of Ceremonies under the pseudonym "A Strolling Player". Alan announced the various instruments which Oldfield introduces on track 7, "The Bell".
- Alan appeared in the videoclip "In Demand" by Texas (2000).
- Alan is one of only three actors, to date, to play a title character in a Harry Potter film. Daniel Radcliffe, obviously, plays Harry Potter. Gary Oldman plays Sirius Black, the Prisoner of Azkaban to whom the title refers. Rickman's character, Severus Snape, is the Half-Blood Prince.
- Alan failed his California driving test at one point for "driving too cautiously through a green light".
- Alan says Canada is like a second home to him.
- Alan was active in raising funds for the Labour Party in the UK.
- Alan was voted #19 in Empire Magazine's Greatest Living Movie Stars over the age of 50.
- For the shot where Hans Gruber falls from the top of the building in Die Hard (1988), Alan was actually dropped by a stuntman from a 20-foot high model onto an air bag. To get a genuine surprised look, the stunt man dropped him on the count of two instead of three.
- Alan was nominated for a 2001 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in Private Lives at the Albery Theatre.
- Alan was nominated for a 2002 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor of 2001 for his performance in Private Lives at the Albery Theatre, London.
- Alan was the original voice of Leonardo Leonardo in the 2000 cartoon based on Kevin Smith's film Clerks. (1994), but was replaced by Alec Baldwin, courtesy of ABC.
- When Alan was a child, he had a speech disability: his lower jaw was very tight, causing his words to be indistinctive and muffled.
- Alan was made the Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003.
- Alan is the second of four children in his family. He has an older brother, a younger brother and a younger sister.
- Alan was given the role of Professor Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) only after Tim Roth backed out.
- Alan was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actor for the Broadway revival of Private Lives, in May, 2002.
- Although a highly successful film actor, Alan has frequently passed up film offers to return to the theater, a place and activity which he calls "magical" and his "first love".
- Alan has been in a relationship with Rima Horton since 1965. The two have never married but have lived together since 1977.
- Alan ranked #59 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
- Alan was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#34), in 1995.
- Alan's first major film was Die Hard (1988), where he played the evil terrorist Hans Gruber.
- (on why he won't discuss Snape)
Alan: I never talk about Harry Potter because I think that would rob children of something that's private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it. Some child would read something I said and go, `You mean it's not in my head, I'm not imagining that.' So pardon me if I don't talk about it. Until it's [Potter film franchise] over, it should be left uncommented.
- Alan: You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognises something about themselves or they don't—You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking 'that was nice...now where's the cab?'
- Alan: I know a lot about myself. On the one hand I'm the person who's loading up the washing machine in the morning. But when crowds stare at you at the stage door, you're suddenly someone else.
- Alan: Whatever I am as an actor is as a result of who I am as a person,
what I think and do. My life changes every day, so hopefully my work does.
- Alan: It's a weird area. There you are, 15ft across the screen, and people can visit all sorts of fantasies on your face that are nothing to do with you.
You just have to deal with it.
- Alan: I am the character you are not supposed to like.
- Alan: I'm still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there's half a pot of yoghurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.
- Alan: As we get older, we are all waiting on the shore. It's the young who walk out into the world we have made for them.
- Alan: I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: You're going to forget your lines.
- Alan: An actor likes to be treated in a certain way, to work in a certain manner.
- Alan: (on moving between England and the States) If you could build a house on a trampoline that would suit me fine.
- Alan: I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.
- Alan: You only speak as a human being in life and, therefore, you're trying to reproduce life onstage.
- Alan: You don't always look ahead, but you turn equally to the past. I think of that more and more.
- Alan: You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.
- Alan: Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.
- Alan: When you come off the stage, you want to walk out into life.
- Alan: When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter.
- Alan: What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.
- Alan: What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.
- Alan: We all say lots of stupid things that, you know, you wish you could take back.
- Alan: Valmont had such a complicated psyche, you couldn't say that about Hans Gruber.
- Alan: There's no master plan. It's not calculated. Every choice is taken on its own terms.
- Alan: There's a voice inside you that tells you what you should do.
- Alan: There are particular muscles which go flabby if you don't use them.
- Alan: There are a lot of gremlins out there for both of us.
- Alan: The play makes the rules. This play is about couples who swim in and out of focus.
- Alan: The play is as seductive as any of its characters.
- Alan: The main trouble is that as an actor you've got too many memories of horrible rehearsals.
- Alan: The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.
- Alan: Talent is an accident of genes-and a responsibility.
- Alan: Sometimes you see a film and make a mental note that you want to work with that particular director.
- Alan: Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch.
- Alan: Some actors have opportunities and shapes given to them. Not me.
- Alan: One of the concerns I had... was a culture which puts its actors on pedestals.
- Alan: One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.
- Alan: On film you put all your energies into a single glance.
- Alan: Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.
- Alan: My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theatre. I'm some kind of accident.
- Alan: My mother was widowed young-I was the second of four children and she raised us on her own.
- Alan: My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.
- Alan: Most of our lives, we function with a big divide between here and here.
- Alan: Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.
- Alan: Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.
- Alan: Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There's a great deal of wonderful energy there.
- Alan: It's disgusting and wonderful. Like going to Dunkin' Donuts for lunch every day.
- Alan: It's also a curious thing to be doing because I haven't been on stage for four years.
- Alan: It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it.
- Alan: If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.
- Alan: If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.
- Alan: I've never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.
- Alan: I've had to guide my career and seize any opportunity that came my way.
- Alan: I'm aware of lots of cross currents rather than separating things out.
- Alan: I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience.
- Alan: I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.
- Alan: I wouldn't dream of being out there as an actor looking for work.
- Alan: I was always used to seeing my mother in the brightest of colours.
- Alan: I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.
- Alan: I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.
- Alan: I think worrying things are going on in England-a real apathy.
- Alan: I only saw Magnolia recently, and thought it was just brilliant.
- Alan: I don't want to drag anybody anywhere. But where were you born?
- Alan: I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.
- Alan: I don't know what I'm going to be doing in the next half hour.
- Alan: I couldn't have done a film without computer graphics.
- Alan: I can't answer for what the director or the studio do.
- Alan: Certain things that one does get more focus than others.
- Alan: At least I'm not being stoned in the street here for having dared to try.
- Alan: Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.
- Alan: A journalist's lasso... the guy who plays villains.
- Alan: Nothing is like anything else and I'm not thinking of anything else I've done, just the job in hand.
- Alan: My whole life's been lived in west London-born, schooled, art-schooled, drama-schooled.
- Alan: Most of the 14 films I've done, however, have been independents shot in Europe and Great Britain.
- Alan: I'm a Piscean. In every area of my life complete opposites are at work all the time.
- Alan: I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.
- Alan: I think it's a disgrace that English actors get taken advantage of. It's very different here.
- Alan: I love to travel and I don't have children, so there is a certain freedom.
- Alan: I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: You're going to forget your lines.
- Alan: I find myself becoming less and less enamoured of public statement-I'd rather see it in action.
- Alan: I drive a car in L.A; and I don't here. I feel more in charge of myself.
- Alan: I don't mind seducing as long as at the end of the seduction there's an idea or a shock.
- Alan: I don't eat the right food, I'm not a monk, and I'm very gregarious. But I'm not stupid.
- Alan: I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.
- Alan: I came off a huge-budgeted Hollywood movie and went to a place where you could hear yourself think.
- Alan: Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.
- Alan: Coming back to do a play at a Scottish festival must seem very perverse. Even I thought I was mad.
- Alan: All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.
