Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman
Rickman at the Tribeca Film Festival, April 2007 JACKASS
Born	Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1978–present

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor. Rickman is best known for his performances in film as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, as well as extensive stage work. He is also known for his prominent role as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 blockbuster film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and more recently Judge Turpin in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Steven Spurrier in Bottle Shock.

Early life

Rickman was born in Hammersmith, London to a working-class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker. Rickman's mother was Welsh and a Methodist and his father was of Irish Catholic background, He has one older brother David, a younger brother Michael and a younger sister Sheila. Rickman attended an infants' school in Acton that followed the Montessori method of education. When he was eight his father died, leaving his mother to raise four children mostly alone. She married again, but divorced his stepfather after three years. "There was one love in her life," Rickman later said. Rickman excelled at calligraphy and watercolour painting, and from Derwentwater Junior School he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he started getting involved in drama. After leaving Latymer, Rickman attended Chelsea College of Art and Design and made his way as a graphic designer, which he considered a more stable occupation than acting. "Drama school wasn't considered the sensible thing to do at 18," he said. Rickman received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) which he attended from 1972–1974. While there, he studied Shakespeare's works and supported himself working as a dresser for Sir Nigel Hawthorne and Sir Ralph Richardson, and left after winning several prizes such as the Emile Littler Prize, the Forbes Robertson Prize, and the Bancroft Gold Medal.

Career

After graduating from the RADA, Rickman worked extensively with various British repertory and experimental theatre groups on productions including The Seagull and Snoo Wilson's The Grass Widow at the Royal Court Theatre, and has appeared three times at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 1978, he played with the Court Drama Group, performing in several plays, most notably Romeo And Juliet and A View from the Bridge. While working with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) he starred in, among other things, As You Like It. He was the male lead in the 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by Christopher Hampton, which was a sellout. When the show went across the Atlantic in 1986, Rickman went on with it to Broadway and there earned a Tony Award nomination for his performance.

While with the RSC he shared a house with fellow company member Ruby Wax. Rickman put her into writing comedy and proceeded to direct several of her successful shows. "If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work", he said. In 1992, in an interview for The Big Issue magazine, Rickman said,

"You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognises something about themselves or they don't — You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking 'that was nice...now where's the cab?'"

To television audiences he also became known as Mr. Slope in the BBC's 1980s adaptation of Barchester Towers. He played future Irish Taoiseach and president Éamon de Valera in the film Michael Collins alongside Liam Neeson as the title character. While playing romantic leads in British movies (Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility; Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply), he was generally typecast in Hollywood films as an over-the-top villain (German terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). His role in Die Hard earned him a spot on the American Film Institute's list of the "100 Best Heroes/Villains" as the 46th best villain in film history. His performance of Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also made him known as one of the best actors to portray a villain in films.

File:Hansgruber.jpg

Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard

Rickman has also played comedic roles in films such as Galaxy Quest, Dogma, and as Emma Thompson's foolish husband in Love Actually. He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance as Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny in 1996, and was also nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred Blalock in 2004's Something the Lord Made. Rickman was cast in 2005 as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. Coincidentally, Rickman and David Learner, who occupied Marvin's costume for the TV adaptation and stage shows, studied together at RADA. He was very busy in 2006 with Snow Cake (with Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss) which had its debut at the Berlinale, and also Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (with Dustin Hoffman), directed by Tom Tykwer.

Rickman has performed on stage in Noel Coward's romantic comedy Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway after its successful run in London at the Albery Theatre and ended in September 2002. Rickman had reunited with his Les Liaisons Dangereuses co-star Lindsay Duncan, and director Howard Davies for this Tony Award-winning production.

His previous stage performance was as Mark Antony, opposite Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, in the Royal National Theatre's production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London, which ran from 20 October to 3 December 1998. Before that, he performed in Yukio Ninagawa's Tango at the End of Winter in London's West End and the Riverside Studio production of Hamlet in 1991, directed by Robert Sturua. He directed The Winter Guest at London's Almeida Theatre in 1995. He also directed the film version in 1996 starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother Phyllida Law.

Rickman has also been featured in several musical works — most notably in a song composed by the English songwriter Adam Leonard. Moreover, the actor played a "Master of Ceremonies" part in announcing the various instruments in Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II on the track The Bell. Rickman was one of the many artists who recited Shakespearian sonnets on the 2002-released When Love Speaks CD, and is also featured prominently in a music video by the band Texas entitled In Demand, which premiered on Europe MTV in August 2000. In the video, lead singer Sharleen Spiteri danced the tango with Rickman: the clip was nominated for Best British Video at the Brit Awards.

Rickman played Severus Snape, the seemingly sinister potions master of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga, in the six films of that series to date. In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named him one of their favorite people in pop culture, saying that in the Harry Potter films, "he may not be on screen long - but he owns every minute," and that he is capable of "turning a simple retort into a mini-symphony of contempt."

Rickman directed the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and won the Theatre Goers' Choice Awards for best director. The production is based on the writings of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American woman who was killed on 16 March 2003 by an Israeli armored bulldozer. The show played at the West End's Playhouse Theatre in London from March to May 2006. The play also ran at both the Galway Arts Festival and the Edinburgh Festival in 2006.

In 1995 Rickman turned down the role of Alec Trevelyan in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. Rickman has taken issue with being labeled as a "villain actor", citing the fact that he has not portrayed a stock villain character since the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991. He has further said that he has continued to portray characters of complex and varying emotions, and does not think it is fair to assign characters a label of good or evil, hero or villain. Prior to the book release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rickman had spoken on occasion about Snape quite easily, but with the controversy of the character following the events of the sixth book, Rickman refused to speak on the character.

In 2007, Rickman appeared in the critically-acclaimed Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street directed by Tim Burton, alongside Harry Potter co-stars Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall; he played antagonist Judge Turpin. According to Miami Herald, Rickman's performance "makes the judge's villainy something to simultaneously savor and despise", with his "oozing moral rot and arrogance". Rickman will also be appearing as The Caterpillar in the upcoming 2010 Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland alongside Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway.

In the media

Rickman was chosen by Empire as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (No 34) in 1995 and ranked No 59 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997. Rickman became Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003. He was voted No 19 in Empire magazine's Greatest Living Movie Stars over the age of 50 and was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actor (Play): in 1987 for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and in 2002 for a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives.

Rickman was recently set up by BBC Radio 4's Dead Ringers programme. The programme satirised Rickman's distinctive inflection when playing 'baddies.' The episode "Peter's Progress" of the television cartoon Family Guy included a scene mocking Rickman's voice, by portraying him repeatedly calling his own answering machine.

Research to find 'the perfect voice' has indicated that Rickman's voice is one of the best contenders. The combination of his voice along with Jeremy Irons' voice was deemed the perfect male voice based on intonation, trustworthiness, and soothingness.

Filmography and awards

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1978	Romeo and Juliet	Tybalt	BBC Television Shakespeare
1982	The Barchester Chronicles	The Rev. Obadiah Slope
1988	Die Hard	Hans Gruber
1989	The January Man	Ed, the painter
1990	Quigley Down Under	Elliot Marston, an unscrupulous ranch owner
1991	Truly Madly Deeply	Jamie	Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
	Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves	Sheriff of Nottingham	Won BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
	Close My Eyes	Sinclair Bryant
	Closet Land	The Interrogator
1992	Bob Roberts	Lukas Hart III
1994	Mesmer	Franz Anton Mesmer
1995	An Awfully Big Adventure	P.L. O'Hara
	Sense and Sensibility	Colonel Brandon	Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
	Die Hard with a Vengeance	Hans Gruber	Flashback
1996	Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny	Grigori Rasputin	Won Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Miniseries or Television Film Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Male Actor - Miniseries or Television Film
	Michael Collins	Éamon de Valera	Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
1997	The Winter Guest	Man in street (uncredited)	Director
1998	Judas Kiss	Detective David Friedman
	Dark Harbor	David Weinberg
1999	Dogma	The Metatron
	Galaxy Quest	Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus
2000	Play	M
	Help! I'm a Fish!	Joe	voice
	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	Severus Snape	Known as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in United States
2001	Blow Dry	Phil Allen
	The Search for John Gissing	John Gissing
2002	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	Severus Snape
	King of the Hill	King Philip
2003	Love Actually	Harry
2004	Something the Lord Made	Dr. Alfred Blalock	Nominated Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie
	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	Severus Snape
2005	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	Marvin the Paranoid Android	voice
2006	Perfume: The Story of a Murderer	Antoine Richis
	Snow Cake	Alex Hughes
2007	Nobel Son	Eli Michaelson, Nobel laureate
	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	Severus Snape
	Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street	Judge Turpin
2008	Bottle Shock	Steven Spurrier
	We're Here To Help	Fenchurch	in production
2009	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	Severus Snape	Won [The James Joyce Award from The University College of Dublin’s Literary and Historical Society]
2010	Alice in Wonderland	The Caterpillar	post-production
	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I	Severus Snape	filming
	The Villa Golitsyn	Willy	in production
2011	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II	Severus Snape	pre-production

External links

• Alan Rickman at IMDb
• Alan Rickman at the Internet Broadway Database