alanprickman:

_{“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 resumé of my career and loudly
demanded that  the director up his game.” — Ian McKellen on Alan Rickman [x]}