Alan Rickman dies at 69
He was not on the list.
Alan Rickman, one of the best-loved and most warmly admired
British actors of the past 30 years, has died in London aged 69. His death was
confirmed on Thursday by his family who said that he died “surrounded by family
and friends”. Rickman had been suffering from cancer.
A star whose arch features and languid diction were
recognisable across the generations, Rickman found a fresh legion of fans with
his role as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films.
Cast and crew on those movies were among the first to pay
tribute to the actor. In a lengthy post, Daniel Radcliffe wrote that Rickman
was “one of the greatest actors I will ever work with” as well as “one of the
loyalest and most supportive people I’ve ever met in the film industry”.
JK Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, said: “There
are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan
Rickman’s death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man”, while
Michael Gambon, who played Dumbledore, said: “Everybody loved Alan. He was
always happy and fun and creative and very, very funny.”
The actor had been a big-screen staple since first shooting
to global acclaim in 1988, when he starred as Hans Gruber, Bruce Willis’s
sardonic, dastardly adversary in Die Hard – a part he was offered two days
after arriving in Los Angeles, aged 41.
Gruber was the first of three memorable baddies played by
Rickman: he was an outrageous sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves, as well as a terrifying Rasputin in an acclaimed 1995 HBO
film.
But Rickman was also a singular leading man: in 1991, he
starred as a cellist opposite Juliet Stevenson in Anthony Minghella’s affecting
supernatural romance Truly, Madly, Deeply; four years later he was the
honourable and modest Col Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, starring and
scripted by Emma Thompson. He was to reunite with Thompson many times: they
played husband and wife in 2003’s Love, Actually and former lovers in 2010 BBC
drama The Song of Lunch.
In 1995, he directed Thompson and her mother, Phyllida Law,
in his directorial debut, the acclaimed Scottish drama The Winter Guest.
Thompson – who said she had “just kissed him goodbye” – wrote:
What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking
is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with
a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great
artist he was – his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw
most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I
learned a lot from him. He was the finest of actors and directors. I couldn’t
wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself
hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been
directed by him.
He was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I
trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being
and we shall not see his like again.
Last year, Rickman reunited with Kate Winslet, another Sense
and Sensibility co-star, for his second film as director, A Little Chaos – a
period romance set in the gardens of Versailles.
Yet it was Rickman’s work on stage that established him as
such a compelling talent, and to which he returned throughout his career. After
graduating from Rada, the actor supported himself as a dresser for the likes of
Nigel Hawthorne and Ralph Richardson before finding work with the Royal
Shakespeare Company (as well as on TV as the slithery Reverend Slope in The
Barchester Chronicles).
His sensational breakthrough came in 1986 as Valmont, the
mordant seducer in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He was
nominated for a Tony for the part; Lindsay Duncan memorably said of her
co-star’s sonorous performance that audiences would leave the theatre wanting
to have sex “and preferably with Alan Rickman”.
He and Duncan – as well as their director, Howard Davies –
reunited in 2002 for Noel Coward’s Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway
after a successful run in London.
Other key stage performances included Mark Antony opposite
Helen Mirren’s Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London, and the title role
in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2010 – again
with Duncan, and again transferring to New York. The following year he starred
as a creative writing professor in Seminar on Broadway.
In 2005, Rickman directed the award-winning play My Name is
Rachel Corrie, which he and Katharine Viner – now Guardian editor-in-chief –
compiled from the emails of the student who was killed by a bulldozer while
protesting against the actions of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip.
Rickman remained politically active throughout his life: he
was born, he said, “a card-carrying member of the Labour party”, and was highly
involved with charities including Saving Faces and the International
Performers’ Aid Trust, which seeks to help artists in developing and
poverty-stricken countries.
Rickman publicly spoke of his unhappiness about the
“Hollywood ending” of 1996 film Michael Collins, a historical biopic of the
Irish civil war, in which he portrayed Éamon de Valera, and expressed his
belief that art ought to help educate as well as entertain. “Talent is an
accident of genes, and a responsibility,” he once said.
He and his wife, Rima Horton, met when they were still
teenagers; she became an economics lecturer as well as a Labour party
councillor. In 2012, the pair married, having been together since 1965. The
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was one of the first to pay tribute on Twitter,
followed by former leader Ed Miliband.
Others offering condolences included Stephen Fry, Eddie
Izzard, Charlie Sheen, Mia Farrow and Richard E Grant. Many drew parallels
between the deaths of Rickman and David Bowie, from the same disease at the
same age and in the same week.
Rickman was an actor unafraid of the unexpected. He voiced a
monarch in an episode of cult cartoon King of the Hill and a megalomaniac pilot
fish called Joe in the Danish animator Help! I’m A Fish. In 2000, Rickman
appeared as Sharleen Spiteri’s love interest in the music video for Texas’s
2000 hit ‘In Demand’, which involves them tangoing at a petrol station. In
2015, Rickman again featured in the video for one of their singles, this time
with vocals.
He spoofed his own persona in comedy Galaxy Quest (2000), in
which he plays a Shakespearian-trained actor who has found fame as a
Spock-style alien in a long-running sci-fi series and in Victoria Wood’s
Christmas special of the same year, as an upright colonel at the Battle of
Waterloo.
Filmography
Film
Year Title Role Notes
1988 Die Hard Hans Gruber
1989 The January Man Ed, the painter
1990 Quigley Down Under Elliot Marston
1991 Truly, Madly, Deeply Jamie
Closet Land The Interrogator
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Sheriff of Nottingham
Close My Eyes Sinclair Bryant
1992 Bob Roberts Lukas Hart III
1994 Mesmer Franz Mesmer
1995 An Awfully Big Adventure P.L. O'Hara
Sense and Sensibility Colonel Brandon
1996 Michael Collins Éamon de Valera
1997 The Winter Guest Man in street Uncredited, Also director and co-writer
1998 Judas Kiss Detective David Friedman
Dark Harbor David Weinberg
1999 Dogma The Metatron
Galaxy Quest Alexander Dane / Dr. Lazarus
2000 Help! I'm a Fish Joe Voice
2001 Blow Dry Phil Allen
Play Man
The Search for John Gissing John Gissing
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Professor Severus Snape Also released as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
2002 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
2003 Love Actually Harry
2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Professor Severus Snape
2005 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Marvin the Paranoid Android Voice
2006 Snow Cake Alex Hughes
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Antoine Richis
2007 Nobel Son Eli Michaelson
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Professor Severus Snape
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Judge Turpin
2008 Bottle Shock Steven Spurrier
2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Professor Severus Snape
2010 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1
Alice in Wonderland Absolem Voice
The Wildest Dream Noel Odell Voice, Documentary
2011 Portraits in Dramatic Time Himself
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 Professor Severus Snape
The Boy in the Bubble Narrator Voice, Short film
2012 Gambit Lord Shahbandar
2013 The Butler Ronald Reagan
A Promise Karl Hoffmeister
CBGB Hilly Kristal
Dust Tooth fairy Short
2014 A Little Chaos King Louis XIV Also director and co-writer
2015 Eye in the Sky Lieutenant General Frank Benson
2016 Alice Through the Looking Glass Absolem Voice, posthumous release
Television
Year Title Role Notes
1978 Romeo and Juliet Tybalt BBC Television Shakespeare
1980 Thérèse Raquin Vidal 3 episodes
Shelley Clive Episode: "Nowt So Queer"
1982 Busted Simon Television film
Smiley's People Mr. Brownlow 1 episode
The Barchester Chronicles Obadiah Slope 5 episodes
1985 Summer Season Croop Episode: "Pity in History"
Girls on Top Dmitri / RADA 2 episodes
1989 Revolutionary Witness Jacques Roux Television short
Screenplay Israel Yates Episode: "The Spirit of Man"
1993 Fallen Angels Dwight Billings Episode: "Murder, Obliquely"
1996 Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny Grigori Rasputin Television film
2002 King of the Hill King Philip Voice, Episode: "Joust Like a Woman"
2004 Something the Lord Made Alfred Blalock Television film
2010 The Song of Lunch He BBC Drama Production
Stage
Year Title Role Notes
1976 Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes
1977 The Devil is an Ass Wittipol
1978 Love's Labour's Lost Boyet
Captain Swing Farquarson
The Tempest Ferdinand
1980 Commitments Unknown
1981 The Seagull Mr. Aston
1983 The Grass Widow Unknown
Bad Language Bob
1985 As You Like It Jaques
Troilus and Cressida Achilles
1986 Mephisto Hendrik Hofgen
1987 Les Liaisons Dangereuses Le Vicomte de Valmont
1991 Tango at the End of Winter Sei
1992 Hamlet Hamlet
1995 The Winter Guest Director
1998 Antony and Cleopatra Mark Antony
2002 Private Lives Elyot Chase
2006 My Name is Rachel Corrie Director and Editor
2008 Creditors Director
2010 John Gabriel Borkman John Gabriel Borkman
2012 Seminar Leonard
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