'Bottle Shock' presents out-of-character challenges for Alan Rickman

In Alan Rickman's newly released film "Bottle Shock," the actor is called upon to create an entrepreneurial and rather uncomfortable life for his character.

The film tells the real-life story of Steven Spurrier, a British expat wine purveyor living in Paris in the mid-1970s. Spurrier is someone only Rickman could play: an open-minded snob, ripe for introduction to the upstart California wine industry. Also required by the role: Rickman must eat KFC and drive a Gremlin.

Yes, this is the iconic actor with the mellifluous voice and aloof demeanor who elegantly plays 19th-century romantic leads and 21st-century stylized villains. This is the actor who is at home on Broadway and London stages, as well as in cult-inducing goofy film comedies. And yet, to hear him tell it, he found the get-his-hands-dirty work on "Bottle Shock" inspiring and challenging.

Most of us remember our first sighting of the actor. For the lucky ones, it was in 1987 on Broadway in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." For some, it was in "Die Hard," where he played debonair villain Hans Gruber.

By 1990, many of us who saw him as the mostly lovable ghost in "Truly Madly Deeply" felt we had discovered a brilliant new leading man. His Colonel Brandon in 1995's "Sense and Sensibility" confirmed his allure. But just as we locked him into the sultry-romantic category, he made "Galaxy Quest" and earned a new wave of fans for his great comedic sense.

In the last decade, he has been playing the complex villain Professor Snape in the "Harry Potter" franchise. And in 2007's film version of "Sweeney Todd," Rickman plays Judge Turpin, in the actor's vision more subtly chilling than overtly diabolical.

Rickman recently spoke with Back Stage about his new movie.

Q: How did you create your "Bottle Shock" character? Did you wait for the costumes to come?

A: Well, the costume is very important because it's period, No. 1. And so it feels very different on your body. It's not free; it's waisted. And also he's from a particular strand of the British class system, which means you make no concessions to the environment, and so he's in 100 degrees of Napa Valley heat in a wool suit and a tie and socks and shoes.

Q: And a Gremlin.

A: And a Gremlin car. And that has to become food for your character. It's part of his totally uncompromising attitude to an alien culture in a very particular British kind of way. "I have landed, I am here, I will now repossess you."

Q: Was your voice this wonderful always, or is this a lot of training?

A: My voice. Well, I don't know, I hear something completely different to everybody else. No, my voice teacher had a constant struggle. And likewise people working with diction. Huge problems. My voice teacher at the time, who was called Michael McCallion - sadly dead now, but is the author of a very fine book about voice and speech in the theater - he said, "You sound as if your voice is coming out of the back end of a drainpipe." So, clearly I had work to do. *