Kate Winslet Was ‘Terrified’ of Alan Rickman When She Met Him and Thought ‘I’m Going to Die’
Actor Kate Winslet originally thought she rubbed late actor Alan Rickman the wrong way when they first collaborated on Sense and Sensibility. And that possibility put a young Winslet in a state of panic.
Kate Winslet didn’t think Alan Rickman liked her
Winslet first collaborated with Rickman in the film Sense and Sensibility. The critically acclaimed project was only Winslet’s second full-length feature in her career, so she admitted to being starstruck. Apart from Rickman, Winslet found herself working alongside a roster of acting veterans that added to her disbelief.
“So much of the time I find myself thinking ‘I haven’t got a clue and what the hell am I doing here’. On Sense and Sensibility, every day I kept thinking ‘This is so ridiculous, I’m working with Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Imogen Stubbs’. They saw me as one of them, on their level. But I felt like an absolute newcomer, which I was and feel that I still am genuinely,” Winslet once said in an interview with The Irish Times.
As overwhelmed as she was, Winslet was fortunate she had so many experienced actors to help guide her through the film. But in the beginning, she wasn’t sure she’d made a favorable impression on one of the film’s biggest stars in Rickman. She even worried she might have put the actor off with her ability.
”Alan is such a gentleman but when I first met him I was absolutely terrified,” Winslet once said according to Evening Standard. “I was 19 and he’s got that voice. I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to die, he thinks I’m rubbish, why am I here?”’
Alan Rickman revealed Kate Winslet wrote an amusing journal about her hard times on ‘Sense and Sensibility’
According to Rickman, Winslet once documented her time on Sense and Sensibility in detail. In a resurfaced interview with The New York Times (via Contact Music), Rickman confided that Winslet had a journal in hand while filming. The actor’s entries contained interesting tidbits about Sense and Sensibility director Ang Lee and Winslet’s other co-stars.
“Kate wrote a book about the film and there are some quotes in there about Ang’s occasionally [loose] grasp of English. We’d get notes that left you kind of staring,” Rickman said.
Rickman shared that Winslet and the rest of the Sense and Sensibility cast didn’t have the easiest time working for Lee. The filmmaker was sometimes very critical of his actors. But this was because of Lee’s limited understanding of English at the time.
“I remember he said to Emma once, ‘Emma, try not to look so old’. That was a little shattering for her but she knew to translate that as ‘don’t be so knowing’. Mine was, ‘Alan, be more subtle, do more’, which we worked out that he meant do more of the subtle stuff,” Rickman recalled.
The Harry Potter alum revealed that Winslet wasn’t exempt from Lee’s criticisms, and at times had it the hardest.
“Kate was only 19 at the time and he said, ‘Kate, never mind, you’ll get better,’” Rickman remembered.
Alan Rickman worked with a different Kate Winslet in ‘A Little Chaos’
Rickman and Winslet would collaborate a second time decades later for the film A Little Chaos. The 2014 feature was directed by Rickman himself, and saw Rickman personally casting Winslet in the role. But he noticed this was a different Winslet than the one he collaborated with years ago.
“We worked together when she was 19 in Sense and Sensibility. It was like meeting a whole new person. Kate is someone who arrives incredibly prepared, free and non-judgmental. She is a phenomenal craftsperson,” Rickman once told Screen Daily.
Likewise, the Titanic star had a pleasant time with the veteran star on their new project.
“It was wonderful [having Alan direct]. We all benefited from his understanding of actors and how we’re all a bit funky sometimes and we can whinge and whine a bit,” she said.
