Tom Burke says godfather Alan Rickman was a ‘huge influence’ on his life

Actor Tom Burke has reflected on how influential his godfather, the late Alan Rickman, was on his life.Rickman died of cancer in 2016, at the age of 69. He was a good friend of Tom Burke’s parents – actors David Burke and Anna Calder-Marshall.Talking about Rickman in a new interview with The Observer, Tom Burke said: ‘When Alan died, Juliet Stevenson got it right when she said we’ve lost a king. You did sometimes feel like you were at Alan’s court. He had a sense of mission about him and was invested in so many people.’Even if you only met him once, he could become a momentary huge influence in your life. He had a way of asking very penetrating questions, often without necessarily meaning to. People would walk away and make quite big life decisions.’Burke also said he had started reading Rickman’s diaries, which were recently published under the title Madly, Deeply. He said he is ‘enjoying them hugely’, adding: ‘I don’t believe I do appear, only because Dad was looking at the index the other day to see.’The actor, 41, can next be seen starring alongside Florence Pugh in Sebastián Lelio’s new film The Wonder, adapted from Emma Donoghue’s novel.His other godparent was actor Bridget Turner, who died in 2014.Rickman’s recently published diaries reveal why he decided to stay in the Harry Potter franchise after trying to quit. He also wrote about how he fought to change a crucial scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.