Villain with a voice of honey .sx Alan Rickman is best known for a string of sinister roles - but he hates being typecast , he tells James Delingpole .sx AT ONE stage Alan Rickman threatened to smash my face in .sx At least I thought he did .sx But I wasn't quite paying attention .sx His voice has such as mesmeric quality that it is terribly easy to drift off on the delicious musicality of his speech and forget what it is he is actually saying .sx It came towards the end of our chat .sx Someone had mentioned beforehand that Rickman was not an easy person to interview , so it was some time before I plucked up the courage to ask him any really difficult questions .sx But when at last I accused him of being cold , cynical and reptilian , he struck .sx " I'm really interested in not having brick walls put up in front of me , " he said , referring to those journalists who sought to reduce him to a few easy adjectives .sx " And if it means the brick builder gets my fist in their face , then so be it .sx " .sx So , as I discovered when I played back my tape of the interview , his threat had not been as direct as I had imagined .sx But he had made his point .sx Alan Rickman does not like being typecast .sx The problem is that , for much of his career , he has been unable to avoid it .sx He has played the demonic lead in Mephisto , the camp but chilling baddies in Die Hard and Robin Hood :sx Prince of the Thieves , the icy Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses .sx .. None of these people are exactly the sort you'd trust to look after your cat while you are away on holiday .sx What must make it even more frustrating for Rickman is that he is so terribly good at playing these villains .sx When his Sheriff of Nottingham snarls " No more merciful beheadings !sx " you long to see his goodie-goodie rival , Kevin Costner's Robin Hood , swinging from the nearest gibbet .sx This was the reason why Costner decided to re-shoot and re-edit the film .sx Rickman denies that there was any friction on the set , but it is an open secret that , when preview audiences saw the film in its original form , they found the Sheriff much more sympathetic than Robin .sx Robin Hood may well be the last time Rickman plays the second string to anybody's bow .sx Hollywood loves him .sx So does the West End and Broadway , where he distinguished himself in Les Liaisons Dangereuses .sx And even the British film industry has reason to be grateful for his performances in its latest offerings , Close My Eyes and Truly , Madly , Deeply .sx Rickman may have reached an age at which , as he told one interviewer , he is " too old to play Hamlet " , but virtually any other leading part he wants is there for the asking .sx At last , he believes , he will be able to confound those casting directors who simply want him to repeat his best-known roles .sx It is understandable that his hackles rise when he is accused of specialising in cold , arid cynics .sx In his defence he cites The Lucky Chance at the Royal Court .sx " I was playing somebody completely open , energised , with a mission , not at all cynical , not at all laid-back , not at all any of those words and people said " Gosh , I didn't know you could do that .sx ' " .sx Perhaps he just been sic !sx unlucky .sx It was not his fault that , say , the television series The Barchester Chronicles - in which he played the loathsome Obadiah Slope - succeeded , while the film The January Man - in which he played a nice guy - did not .sx And yet , he does have this peculiar ability to invest even his most likeable characters with a vaguely chilling quality .sx In Close My Eyes , for example , he plays a generous - and totally harmless - rich cuckold .sx But Rickman endows his character with such an intense inner life that you suspect that , at any moment , he might be about to commit some monstrous act of violence .sx When I put this to him , Rickman adopts a pained expression .sx " There is a certain warmth , I would have thought , " he says , before suggesting that what I saw as coldness was in fact " watchfulness" .sx Seeing I am not convinced , he goes on :sx " This is me .sx I have a certain pitch to my voice , a certain way of framing my sentences .sx " .sx And there is some truth in that .sx He speaks slowly , deliberately and almost dreamily , with each phrase fading languorously into a honeyed , dying fall .sx He sounds intelligent , sometimes sibilantly dangerous , but always ineffably seductive .sx This could well be Rickman's secret .sx It is why , for example , his portrayal of the callous rou e in Les Liaisons Dangereuses was so painfully sympathetic .sx And why , after an hour's exposure to his hypnotic charm , I felt a desperate urge to write the most gushingly favourable interview sycophancy could devise .sx He works this trick yet again in his latest West End play , Tango at the End of Winter .sx Although he is playing a madman , Rickman does it with such quiet reasonableness that his character's weird vision of the world threatens to overwhelm the supposedly sane view of those who surround him .sx It may sound reminiscent of King Lear or Henry IV , but the difference is that Shakespeare and Pirandello give their characters a head start by granting them the most compelling speeches .sx The text of Tango does not have this sophistication .sx The skill is all Rickman's .sx While there is now no shortage of directors willing to pay tribute to his talents , it was not always so .sx Rickman entered RADA late - having trained as a graphic designer at Chelsea and The Royal College of Art - and it was some time before he found his feet on the stage .sx " When Alan first came to Stratford , " one RSC director recalls , " it was terribly embarrassing .sx There was one season when he was so awful that we had a directors' meeting and we asked each other 'What are we going to do with him ?sx ' But then he just grew up .sx And suddenly every one wanted this wonderful new leading man .sx " .sx Rickman himself does not set too much store by his stint at Stratford .sx " I was with the RSC for three years but I also spent seven years doing plays at the Bush , at Hampstead , and the Royal Court , which I regard just as much as my spiritual home .sx " .sx He resents the way regional theatre has declined since " Thatcher put the boot in " .sx He explains :sx " When I left drama school you could go to a repertory theatre and be in a Shakespeare play or something large where you could go and make ghastly mistakes .sx About the only places where you can do that now are the RSC and the National .sx Everyone's making their mistakes in great big places .sx " .sx When talking about the " state of the theatre " , Rickman sounds almost excited - which is to say that his voice rises a few decibels higher than his customary half-whisper .sx The only other time he appears to stir from his customary languor is when I attempt to define him with a few glib adjectives .sx Just as he loathes typecasting , so he is unwilling to have his personality summed up in a newspaper profile .sx Which may be why Rickman has acquired his " difficult " reputation and why - albeit with a sharky grin - he made his little remark about fists and brick walls .sx 'Gaslight' amid the candyfloss .sx Byron Rogers makes a pilgrimage to Sheringham , where England's last seaside rep company is ending its summer season .sx ENGLAND ends here , at the North Sea , and its traditions survive in the way an empire survives in its extremities long after the centre has crumbled .sx You get the growing sensation when you arrive in Sheringham in Norfolk that you have stepped back 40 years .sx There are no Chinese or Indian restaurants , few multiple stores , and people live above their shops the way they did everywhere once .sx Just down the coast at Cromer is the last end-of-pier variety show and here the last English seaside rep is in summer season .sx " I came here on holidays when I was seven , " says John Laing , who finds himself back again after a long absence , this time to act .sx " The town's not changed at all , perhaps because it's so small , so inaccessible .sx People come here to die .sx If we're lucky they'll come to watch weekly rep , and then die .sx " .sx Whatever happens in his subsequent career the actor will never forget Wednesdays :sx Wednesdays was when the weekly change round occurred .sx In the morning he rehearsed and in the evenings appeared in the last performance of the old week's play .sx When all that was over he helped to pull down one set and build another .sx John Laing will remember panic too , an old friend by the end .sx Three days before he was due to star in Gaslight earlier this season , he prowled the rehearsal stage , colliding with furniture and still reading his part aloud .sx In five weeks he was to appear in five different productions .sx Nothing , not even the wistful terror of old actors ( " My dear boy , weekly rep .sx .. Omigod " ) had prepared him for this .sx " On stage it is a matter of who stands where and who sits down where .sx There's no time for anything else .sx " .sx But mostly he will remember the local woman in the ticket box .sx The company had taken a risk staging Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Frequent , a verse play , but as the curious shuffled in from the beach she had her finest hour .sx " It's set in a tomb , " she explained to the customers .sx " The husband's dead and his widow's going to sit there until she dies too .sx " And he heard her say without drawing breath , " It's a comedy .sx " .sx The last year-round weekly rep closed in the 1970s in Bexhill-on-Sea , and actress Gillian Kerrod , still in her thirties and another of the Sheringham hoofers this summer , marvelled that she should remember its Penguin Players , who now seem part of that pre-history when actors were expected to provide their own wardrobes and travelled with skips full of formal dress .sx The Little Theatre at Sheringham is a remarkable place , with seating for only 200 , but everything you would expect to find in a commercial theatre is here in miniature :sx the bar , the dressing-rooms ( or room ) , the upper circle .sx And its survival is even more remarkable .sx Once a factory for boiling whelks , it subsequently became a department store , then a cinema , at which point the local council bought it , and began the tradition of summer rep in 1960 .sx Thirteen years later , the council leased it to the town's amateur dramatic society .sx Since then , Sheringham has looked after its own , putting on plays , collecting funds , but the summer professional rep persisted .sx To cut costs , you need a tiny company , and for the last five years Stepen Warden ran a summer season here with just six actors , chosen for their ability to age 10 years , or lose 15 .sx Their small number restricted the plays that they put on , and there was the problem of audiences , cosseted by type-casting on television , who stared in bewilderment at wigs and make-up .sx In the end Warden felt he could not go on , and it seemed the last seaside rep would close .sx But geography came to the rescue .sx Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire is halfway between the studios in Manchester of Granada Television and of Yorkshire TV in Leeds ; many actors now live in Hebden Bridge , waiting for their phones to ring .sx Four years ago they formed their own company , Bridge Players , put on plays in the town's theatre and went on tours .sx On one of these there was a blank Saturday night ( " Dreadful thing for a struggling company " ) , when Freda Kelsall , the artistic director , remembered the strange little theatre she had seen when looking for an East Coast location for a TV series .sx So the players came to Sheringham .sx It occurred to her then that the problems of weekly summer rep might be overcome simply by doubling up with Hebden Bridge .sx