Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard actor, dies aged 69
by PSR News Bureau
Actor Alan Rickman, known for films including Harry Potter (as Severus Snape), Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, has died at the age of 69, his family has confirmed. He had been suffering from cancer for years now.
He became one of Britain’s best-loved acting stars thanks to roles including Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films and Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling led the tributes, describing him as “a magnificent actor and a wonderful man.”
Rowling even wrote on her personal Twitter account: “There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman’s death.”
She added: “My thoughts are with [Rickman’s wife] Rima and the rest of Alan’s family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts.”
Rickman came to acting late, and came to film acting even later: In his early adult life, he’d worked as a graphic designer. At age 26 he applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and he worked in theater and film through much of the 1980s. His first film role, and the one that introduced him to American audiences, was that of the urbane villain Hans Gruber in John McTiernan’s 1988 Die Hard. He was already in his early forties. In a profession where so many people rush to be stars, he had taken his time, and perhaps the film career that flourished from that point was especially rich and varied because of that. Rickman found the sweet spot right between leading man and character actor, and it suited him.
The list of roles Rickman played is long and all-embracing, from providing the voice of the Blue Caterpillar in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (as well as in James Bobers’ upcoming Alice Through the Looking Glass) to portraying Ronald Reagan in Lee Daniels’ The Butler. In Dean Parisot’s marvelous 1999 space odyssey Galaxy Quest, he played Alexander Dane, a very serious actor who, to his great annoyance, has been relegated to playing a Spock-like alien on a cult-hit TV show. Forced to wear crazy, corrugated high-forehead makeup, he bemoans his fate: “I was an actor once!” In this performance, Rickman’s eyerolling is particularly spectacular, a mini art form unto itself.
Well-known for his effective portrayal of Severus Snape, Rickman did the role of Snape in the eight pictures of the Harry Potter series. He was a tangle of contradictions that weren’t immediately apparent. Mostly, with his lank black hair and wan complexion, he just looked deliciously evil. Striding through the halls of Hogwarts, he was imposing and imperious, his inky black cape floating around him as if it, too, were furious with the world. J.K. Rowling has said that she knew Snape’s story arc from the beginning: She called him “a gift of a character,” and, as it turns out, she got a gift of an actor to play him, too.
The sound of Snape’s voice, resonant and beguiling, is a kind of magic charm by itself. It may be the thing you remember. But it’s inseparable, in the end, from the whole spectacular package.
His final job was taping a voiceover for a short film called This Tortoise Could Save a Life, in aid of Save the Children and Refugee Council. Released in mid December 2015, the film’s audio was recorded at Rickman’s home in London at the end of November.
Rickman never won an Oscar (he did receive a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Bafta and many more) became a perennial topic in interviews but did not seem to trouble the actor himself. “Parts win prizes, not actors,” he said in 2008. It was the wider worth of his art to which Rickman remained committed, saying that he found it easier to treat the work seriously if he could look upon himself with levity.
“Actors are agents of change,” he said. “A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.”
