The read
December 1991 — the year his Sheriff of Nottingham walked away with Robin Hood — Rickman is on the radio talking about playing villains, in the voice that made villainy sound like a leisure activity. The drawl splits into two measured parts. Time: nineteen percent silence, thirty-one stops averaging three-quarters of a second, one held past two full seconds and never apologised for. Melody: pitch variability at the very ceiling of the optimal band, the voice sliding through its range with no urgency whatsoever. The lesson isn’t slowness — his rate is only modestly under the band. It’s that nothing, not the pause and not the slide, ever gets cut short.