#ben wyatt human disaster

I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.

“…I found something inside of myself, something incredibly heroic. I mean, not to brag, but objectively…”

                     You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I.

Moffat Appreciation Week: favourite episode not by Moffat in each series by Moffat

GUESS WHO RANDOMLY SHOWED UP AT THE REVENANT PREMIERE!!! Yes my baby, Freddie fox. I’ve missed him so much and he said I looked familiar and then remembered me awhh he’s such a cutie. I got the warmest hug too awhhh Omg I actually love my boo sooooo much. (I’m not going to post our selfie cause I look hideous, it was very fucking cold ok)

”One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”

- The First Doctor, The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

Series 9 - Hell Bent

A worker at Universal Studios placed a single lily in front of the potions classroom in Hogwarts Castle

Ian McKellen remembers Alan Rickman

ALAN RICKMAN (1946-2016)

There is so much that is matchless to remember about Alan Rickman. His career was at the highest level, as actor on stage and screen and as director ditto. His last bequest of his film “A Little Chaos” and his indelible performance as Louis 14th, should now reach the wider audience they deserve.

Beyond a career which the world is indebted to, he was a constant agent for helping others. Whether to institutions like RADA or to individuals and certainly to me, his advice was always spot-on. He put liberal philanthropy at the heart of his life.  He and Rima Horton (50 years together) were always top of my dream-list dinner guests. Alan would by turns be hilarious and indignant and gossipy and generous.  All this delivered sotto, in that convoluted voice, as distinctive as Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Paul  Scofield, Alec Guinness, Alastair Sim or Bowie, company beyond compare.

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.

Behind  his starry insouciance and careless elegance, behind that mournful face, which was just as beautiful when wracked with mirth, there was a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero, unassuming but deadly effective.

I so wish he’d played King Lear and a few other classical challenges  but that’s to be greedy. He leaves a multitude of fans and friends, grateful and bereft.

– Ian McKellen, London, 14 January 2016 x