![]() ![]() This role, accentuating the first impression made in Die Hard, cemented Rickman's image as a "villain" actor-a title Rickman disliked: "I don't see any of as one word. They were paying Willis $7 million so they had to find people they could pay nothing."Īfter appearing alongside Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under (1990), Rickman starred in three successful features in 1991: Close My Eyes Truly, Madly, Deeply and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which he played an unforgettably arch Sheriff of Nottingham. ![]() "I got Die Hard," Rickman later recalled, "because I came cheap. Rickman was soon tapped for his first Hollywood film role, as the impossibly evil terrorist Hans Gruber (ultimately foiled by Bruce Willis's heroic cop John McClane) in Die Hard (1988). In 1988, Les Liaisons Dangereuses made the leap to the big screen, as Dangerous Liaisons, with the actor John Malkovich taking over the iconic part of Vicomte de Valmont. Rickman performed the unforgettably villainous role first in London and then on Broadway, earning a Tony Award nomination. "Alan was able to transfix not only the viewer," Hampton said, "but he also seemed to have a kind of hypnotic effect on the people he was playing his scenes with." The turning point in Rickman's career came in 1985 with the starring role of Le Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a part that playwright Christopher Hampton (who adapted the script from an 18th century French novel) developed with the actor specifically in mind. ![]() There ought to be someone who helps them develop." Moving on from the RSC, Rickman spent much of the rest of the 1980s acting in BBC serials, radio dramas and repertory theater. People are dropping like flies, doing too many shows at once. It's all about product endlessly churned out-not sufficiently about process. In 1978, Rickman joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in The Tempest and Love's Labour's Lost, among others, although he disliked the experience: "It's a factory," he said. No excuses.'" Rickman supported himself through his two years at the RADA by taking freelance design jobs and by working as a set dresser. "A voice in the head saying, 'It's time to do it. "There was an inevitability about my being an actor since about the age of 7, but there were other roads that had to be traveled first," he later said. ![]() He met his lifetime partner Rima Horton in 1965 while in the amateur Group Court Drama Club.Īt age 26, Rickman decided to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduating, he started a graphic design company, Graphiti, with some friends. Rickman later recalled his early years as impoverished but very happy, until his father died of lung cancer when young Alan was just 8 years old.Īfter showing an early predilection for art, Rickman won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he appeared in several school plays, and then studied graphic design at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. He was the second of four children born to Bernard Rickman, an Irish Catholic factory worker, and Margaret Doreen Rose Rickman, a Welsh Methodist housewife. Early LifeĪctor Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was born on February 21, 1946, in West London, England. Rickman died of cancer on January 14, 2016. His film credits include the notable Harry Potter series, as well as Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). He earned a Tony Award nomination as the star of 1988's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, then came to American consciousness that same year as terrorist Hans Gruber in the big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. He cut his teeth as an actor in 1978, when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Born February 21, 1946, in West London, England, Alan Rickman showed an early penchant for the performing arts. ![]()
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