I first met Alan when I started running the Royal Court in the late 1990s. Despite how incredibly busy he was, he offered himself to me as a kind of generous lieutenant, ready to fight on behalf of the theatre, or sought to give focused and insightful encouragement. You need people like that.

When I became aware that he actually played this role for multitudes of people it didn’t diminish how lucky I felt. In fact, earlier this year, when I was called to his hospital bedside days before he died, to [prepare to]direct his memorial, I realised what an impossible task it would be to include the massive range of people whom Alan had deeply touched. Here was a man who lived his socialism by repeatedly giving to others. He gave his time to a host of urgent issues; his presence to organisations he believed in; and in the most subtle way possible he financially supported a range of different individuals and causes that were simply in need.

His roots gave him an affinity with anyone who crossed his path

One thing Alan was especially passionate about was the political situation in the West Bank, and he responded to this both as a citizen and an artist. He came to me at the Royal Court with an imaginative idea to make a play from the diaries of Rachel Corrie, a young activist who tragically died when run over by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. Alongside the journalist Kath Viner and the actor Megan Dodds, Alan made a stunning show that went from the tiny Theatre Upstairs to the West End, New York, and is still produced all over the world. His direction was typically selfless, detailed and meticulous; and his care of Rachel’s family, as they processed their grief through rehearing their daughter’s words, was mighty.

Before I sound like I am sanctifying Alan I will add that his support and engagement, in the best sense, was often challenging. He could cut you down to size with a withering remark, make perceptive criticisms more useful than general praise, and be forcefully direct. This – for Alan – was about the level of his engagement, which was committed and principled. In this sense he was a tribal elder who we all set our compasses by. When the tribal elder passes, the tribe suffers. There is no one like him to take his place.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rickman as fearsome Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

Going back to his last weeks, earlier this year, what struck me was how all his thoughts were about those left behind: finding the right song to honour Rima, his widow, at the memorial (he chose Take It With Me by Tom Waits); choosing people who he felt would be most able to speak, and sparing those for whom it might be too demanding. Choosing material that was enlivening, amid the upset – like the exuberant video of Fred Astaire and others dancing to Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk – as well as rousing: a speech from a French revolutionary fighter from an early TV play he’d done in the 1980s.

When I asked him how he felt about dying, he said – after a pause – “calm”. Perhaps that generosity of spirit had enabled him to get his house in order (he literally furnished a new house for Rima for her new life), say goodbye to as many people as he could, and hopefully feel a sense of pride at how much he had achieved in his life.

Alan Rickman – a life in pictures Read more

In that cold January, when Alan died (in the same week as David Bowie), you realised – through his popular work on screen, particularly in the Harry Potter films – that Alan functioned as a kind of mythic uncle figure for a generation of young people who had grown up with him. He might have seemed, in retrospect, like an icon of the establishment, but let’s not forget that Alan came from a single-parent family in working-class Acton. I’m sure these roots gave him this ability to find affinity with anyone who crossed his path – from starstruck autograph hunters to refugees in need of shelter.

Alan deplored injustice, inequality and hypocrisy. He loved the industry he worked in, and the potential of art for everyone. His celebrity was irrelevant to him, except as a tool to help give light to all the things he believed in. That light still shines.

Main photograph by Stephen Lovekin/Getty