British actor and director Alan Rickman is widely known for his role as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films.

He has worked on both sides of the camera for his new film A Little Chaos, which tackles issues faced by women past and present.

Rickman describes A Little Chaos as human, true and timeless.

Set in 1682, the romantic drama follows Kate Winslet's character Sabine, a talented landscape designer chosen to build one of the main gardens at King Louis XIV's new palace at Versailles.

Sabine challenges gender and class barriers and becomes involved with the court's renowned landscape artist André Le Notre, played by Matthias Schoenaerts.

"When you ... watch it, I kind of hope that you will all forget about the period and see all sorts of modern parallels," Rickman told Jane Hutcheon on One Plus One.

Rickman reflects on women's roles in both eras, noting the writer's choice to take a period where women were merely decorative objects with no function.

"It's sad that the situation still persists, I mean, you still have women as decorative objects all over the media," he said.

Rickman admires the writing for allowing Schoenaerts' character to show his feminine side and Winslet's character to show her masculine side.

"And neither of them as actors is afraid of that. And I think that creates a great sexual tension between them," Rickman said.

Rickman is a feminist who has encountered strong women throughout his life, including his partner Rima Horton, who is a former Labour Party candidate and lecturer of economics.

"There's nothing wrong with a man being a feminist — I think it's to our mutual advantage," he said.

Rickman was born on a council estate in West London to Margaret Doreen Rose and Bernard Rickman in 1946, around five months after the end of World War II.

When Rickman was eight years old his father died of cancer, leaving his mother to seek out work to feed her family.

But he does not dwell on the hardship, harking back to the story of A Little Chaos when recalling his mother's strength.

"She was a tigress. She could do anything ... all those female things, sew cook and clean — she took care of those things without even thinking about it because she had been trained by her mother," he said.

"But yeah, she had to go out and work, she had various jobs, she got trained in various others, she always reinvented herself.

"Never mind history not talking about women, I think you can go back to fairly recent history and say, 'Well, what would her life had been if she'd had a different education?'"

Rickman seeks truth in storytelling

Rickman is well known to many for his character as Professor Severus Snape from the Harry Potter films. ( www.imdb.com )

Rickman's acting career has spanned decades on stage, screen and television and also branched out to directing.

The 69-year-old began on stage in the Royal Shakespeare Company and made his movie debut in Die Hard as Hans Gruber — the first of many villains he would play.

The latest seemingly villainous character Rickman brought to life was JK Rowling's mysterious potions master at Hogwarts, Severus Snape.

Like Snape, Rickman's acting range goes well beyond evil with past characters including the romantic cello-playing ghost in Truly Madly Deeply and comedic roles in Dogma and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Rickman's sense of satisfaction comes not from starring in blockbusters or being showered with accolades, but something more simple and sublime.

It comes from an exchange between storytellers and their audience — a process he believes actors are part of.

"There's a level of silence in an audience sometimes and you can feel it as an actor ... [it] means that you've got a captive audience sitting in the dark been told a story. This is a very ancient and wonderful thing," Rickman said.

"And it's terrible if we lose this as times changes, as everybody sits at home with their huge screen and their five seats and their surround sound, and they don't actually go out and sit together with a huge bunch of other people in a kind of once upon a time level."

Rickman views his fans' emotional reactions to his films as a reflection of the movie's truthfulness.

"I think it is possible clearly to manipulate people into an emotional response," he said.

"I wouldn't want to be a part of that."

But with Rickman's understated search for truth and lack of Hollywood ego, it looks likely he never will be.

As a director Rickman looks for openness in his work, which is something he says you can almost taste in people who are truly open.

"You can't be passive, there's a kind of active nature to being open and a readiness that's not sitting back ... but making a gift of yourself is quite an active thing to do and quite a challenging thing to do to your fellow actor or the audience — it's not a safe place to be at all."

A Little Chaos is the second film Rickman has directed since The Winter Guest 17 years ago and will open in Australia on March 26.

For the full interview with Jane Hutcheon head to the One Plus One website.