It’s with great sadness that we write a post to say that the brilliant Actor Alan Rickman has died at the age of 69 after losing a fight to cancer.
Best known for his roles as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and, more recently, as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies, Alan Rickman was truly one of the greats in cinema. It is a cruel coincidence that just as the world was coming to terms with losing David Bowie (also 69, also to cancer) we’re now left with another huge hole which will never be filled.
Everyone has a favourite Rickman film, actually – let’s make that clearer – everyone has a favourite Rickman performance. Die Hard, Harry Potter and Truly, Madly, Deeply will rule the headlines over the next 24 hours but his range, however the variety of depth and feelings he invoked in his work was phenomenal.
Those who grew up with his incendiary performance as the dark cloud-shrouded Professor Snape in the Potter movies will mourn his loss deeply. His tragic story was given its heart by Rickman. And who will forget his Sheriff of Nottingham? So good that he upstaged the character the film was named for. Just look!
And then there’s this…
That an actor so accomplished should parody himself so completely is just one of the reasons we loved his work. He wrote and directed two films, The Winter Guest in 1997 and 2014’s A Little Chaos, both are worth checking out. His last role will be as the Blue Caterpillar in James Bobin’s Alice Through the Looking Glass. As with all of these films he made something better by being in it. It’s almost impossible to recall a bad Rickman performance – that’s incredibly rare.
We had the privilege of speaking to him over the years and, as you can see below, he was a class act and will be missed.
