JohnnyDepp-Zone.com

Alan Rickman, who plays the Caterpillar in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, graciously answered a few questions about his newest role at a press conference promoting the just-released Nobel Son, in which Rickman stars. When a reporter asked how the actor could “get into” playing a caterpillar, Rickman drolly replied, “Well, fortunately it’s animated.” Duh. Taking pity on the hapless scribe, Rickman added, “It’s my face on an animated caterpillar. So, it’s a mixture. The movie is a mixture of live action, animation, and stop motion, so it’s very complicated and I don’t think all three have been put together ever before. [. . .] So I’ll be with a live action Alice. I will be a construct.”

Pressed for more details about the unique look of Burton’s Alice, in which Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter, Rickman demurred. “I don’t know what it looks like,” he said. “I’ve only done the first stage of it, which is them recording me saying these lines, quite badly.” Somehow we doubt that. “Then somewhere down the line, they’ll have animated it, and I’ll redo it,” Rickman explained. “I’m a voice, but I have been filmed, because it’s my face which will be on the end of something that will be the caterpillar.”

Most of what Rickman has seen so far of Alice has been green screen, but he has been impressed by his co-stars’ costumes. “[T]he costumes, one or two I saw, are incredible,” Rickman confided. “I’m sure it’ll be visual genius again.”

The Zone thanks Emma for the Alan Rickman interviews; you can read them in their entirety on the News & Views forum, on page 19 of the “All Things Alice (in Wonderland)” thread. –Part-Time Poet