Alan Rickman (1946-2016): ‘Brilliant big-screen villains die hard’
Less than a week after losing David Bowie, Britain's cultural milieu is grappling with the loss of another major artist. Alan Rickman has died, also at age 69, and also from cancer.
Rickman was a consummate artist committed to acting, the theatre generally, and also for the screen. He is one of those character actors who concocted a seemingly endless list of brilliant performances. But as often happens, he’ll be remembered best for a couple of standout blockbuster roles — notably, Die Hard (1988) and the Harry Potter films.
I had the great pleasure of meeting Rickman when he was in Montreal to talk about a film he directed, The Winter Guest, in 1997 at the World Film Festival.
True to what I'd heard, Rickman was entirely ego-less; he mainly wanted to praise the work of his actors, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law, and the entire cast, who he was crediting for any success or praise the film was getting.
I also got the feeling that he was a sensitive person — I was warned by the publicist not to bring up Princess Di's recent death, as he was so emotional about her passing.
Although, he was immortalized by his turns as the erudite villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, some of his other performances are certainly worth watching.
Here are a few screening suggestions, just to be reminded of what a fine and varied actor he was: The spiritual romance Truly Madly Deeply (Anthony Minghella, 1990) in which he and Juliet Stevenson are lovers caught between life and afterlife; Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995), in which Rickman is part of a perfect ensemble; Rasputin (Uli Edel, 1996), in which Rickman brings the madman to life with eerie precision; and Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999), the Trekkies-inspired spoof in which Rickman proves he has a knack for comedy too.
His breakout performance in Die Hard (he landed it but two days after arriving in Hollywood) meant that he was handed a lot of bad guy roles. His was the most memorable villain of the entire franchise, so memorable that the producers lamented that his character was killed off so epically in the first film that there was no way of bringing him back.
Brilliant big-screen villains die hard.
Matthew Hays is a part-time professor of journalism, film studies and communication studies at Concordia. He has written about cinema for The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Guardian, Cineaste and The Daily Beast.