Alan Rickman recently sat down with Variety to talk about his new project A Little Chaos, which he is directing as well as starring in. The film is ‘a period drama about a female landscape gardener who finds herself thrust into the court of Louis XIV.’ The film debuts at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday and hopes to find a distributor. A piece of the interview may be read below; read the full thing here.

You direct as well as act in the film. Was that difficult to juggle?

I think there should be a law against it, but other people manage somehow. Of course, you think about Orson Welles and think shut up and get on with it. It was an economic necessity for me to do it, and I was gifted with an incredibly supportive crew. Secondly, Louis doesn’t move very much. People come to him.

It’s been more than a decade since the last film you directed, “The Winter Guest,” came out. Why the delay?

A little thing called Harry Potter got in the way. That came along in 2000 and though it was just seven weeks out of year, it made it impossible to direct a movie. I’ve spent a year and half of my life on this one. Once my throat was attacked by a snake, it freed me up to go and do this.

Kate’s character and her struggle to be taken seriously for her work seems so modern despite the period trappings. Was that part of the project’s appeal for you?

As a man in society, it’s always salutatory to be reminded of a time when women had to fight to have any proper function other than being decorative and not having a job or being controlled by men.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more or less fascinated by Louis XIV and the whole Versailles thing than anybody else. I would not have ever predicted I’d have made a movie about that period, let alone make a period piece. But the contemporary nature of the writing appealed to me and the highest compliment I’ve received is that people tell me they forget it’s a period movie because the relationship between Kate and Matthias is so strong and subtle.

Was it difficult to bring the court of Louis XIV to life and all its opulence on a limited budget?

From my years in theater I know that limitations are sometimes good for the imagination.