Rickman dies after cancer fight
Actors salute star who was at home on stage and screen
LONDON — Alan Rickman made wickedness delicious.
Reviewing Rickman’s breakout role as a scheming hedonist aristocrat in the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Guardian newspaper critic Nicholas de Jongh likened the actor to “a cat who knows the way to the cream.”
Rickman, who died of cancer on Thursday at age 69, became one of the great Hollywood villains of the past 30 years. With his rich, languid voice and subtly expressive face, Rickman could invest evil with irresistible relish. His performances helped elevate films including Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to the status of cult classics.
“Nobody plays irony like Alan Rickman,” comedian Ruby Wax told the BBC on Thursday.
Emma Thompson, Rickman’s frequent co-star, said: “I couldn’t wait to see what he was going to do with his face next.”
As Hogwarts professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter saga, Rickman maintained the character’s core ambiguity — is he evil or is he good? — across eight films. Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said Rickman was “undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with.”
Rickman was born into a working-class London family on Feb. 21, 1946. He studied art and worked as a graphic designer before auditioning successfully for the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
After graduating, he worked with stage companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company, which cast him as Le Vicomte de Valmont in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The 1985 show was a smash, transferring to London’s West End and to Broadway, where Rickman was nominated for a Tony Award.
He made an indelible mark onscreen as Hans Gruber, the psychopathic villain who tormented Bruce Willis in Die Hard in 1988, and went on to play a deceased lover who consoles his bereaved partner from beyond the grave in 1990’s Truly Madly Deeply, the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991 and a wayward husband in 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually.
Millions know him from the Potter films, in which his Snape was either a nemesis or an ally, possibly both, to the titular teenage wizard.
Radcliffe, who played Harry, said Rickman “was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer, rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career.” Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling wrote on Twitter: “There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman’s death. He was a magnificent actor and a wonderful man.”
Thompson, who starred alongside Rickman in films including Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually, praised Rickman’s “humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness” and called him “the finest of actors and directors.”
Mohammed Saghir, the present Sheriff of Nottingham — now a ceremonial role in the English Midlands city — paid tribute to Rickman’s version of Robin Hood’s famous foe. “His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing,” Saghir said.
Rickman’s villains were memorable, and included an Emmywinning turn as “mad monk” Rasputin in a 1996 TV biopic.
But his screen roles were remarkably varied. Among them were the upright Col. Brandon in Ang Lee’s 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibility and Irish politician Eamon de Valera in 1996 historical drama Michael Collins.
Rickman had a sideline in comic sci-fi, bringing knowingness and fun to the spoof Galaxy Quest in 1999 and delivering existential ennui as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2005.
He appeared frequently onstage, earning Tony nominations for Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1987 and Noel Coward’s Private Lives in 2002.
Rickman was also a filmmaker, directing and co-starring opposite Kate Winslet in 2014 costume drama A Little Chaos. Seventeen years earlier, he’d directed Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law in The Winter Guest. He said he would have directed more movies had a decade of work on Harry Potter not intervened.
In 2005, he directed My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the diaries of an American proPalestinian activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip.
Sigourney Weaver, who starred with Rickman in Galaxy Quest and the 2006 film Snow Cake, said the project was an example of the way Rickman “used his talent always to make a difference.”
Rickman is survived by his partner of 50 years, Rima Horton, whom he married in 2012.