![]() ![]() Primarily a character actor, Rickman won plaudits as the honorable Col. He also played the shifty campaign manager in “Bob Roberts” (1992), an American political satire written, directed by and starring Tim Robbins as a right-wing millionaire masquerading as a populist. He was a cellist who comes back from the dead to comfort his former lover (Juliet Stevenson) in the romantic fantasy “Truly Madly Deeply” (1990) and was the cruel Sheriff of Nottingham to Kevin Costner’s bland hero in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (1991). To paint Rickman as a specialist in villainy is to dramatically underestimate his range as a performer. Eventually you get to find out who he is. He lives within very tight confines emotionally, physically. ![]() “There was more to him than met the eye,” Rickman once said of Snape. Rowling’s popular fantasy books about a schoolboy wizard.Īs a teacher at the wizard academy, Rickman played Professor Severus Snape with all the outward mannerisms of deviancy - the acid manners, the flaring nostrils, the black pageboy cut - but brought to the role discomforting and enigmatic depths that leaves a viewer never entirely sure of whether he is Potter’s ally or tormentor or both. His sneering malevolence went full throttle in the “Harry Potter” films that spanned the 2000s and were based on J.K. Not alone in her assessment, New York Times film reviewer Caryn James called him the “film’s best surprise.” Rickman’s pitch-perfect straddling of over-confident intellect and snake-like menace as his character Hans Gruber holds hostages in a Los Angeles office building made him a compelling nemesis for the blue collar American police detective played by Bruce Willis, whose wit is limited to one liners like “Yippee ki-yay” and an expletive.Īs he so often did, Rickman stole the film from the nominal star, winning unanimous critical praise. That led to his screen breakthrough the next year as a debonair but violent criminal mastermind in the first and best entry in the “Die Hard” action franchise. The silky voiced stalwart of the British stage, Rickman drew a Tony nomination on Broadway in 1987 as the creepily seductive Valmont in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The cause was cancer, and the death was confirmed by Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of the London Guardian, with whom Rickman collaborated on the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” about the young American activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003. Alan Rickman, the classically trained English actor who excelled as tormented fiends and aristocratic weasels in films such as “Die Hard” and the “Harry Potter” franchise, and who also used his languid manner to surprising effect in romantic comedy, died Thursday in London. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |