Britist stage and screen actor Alan Rickman became familiar to American audiences in 1988 when he was cast in the role of Hans Gruber in the action-film hit Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis.
Born in Hammersmith, London, on February, 21, 1946, Rickman started out as a graphic designer. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the early seventies, and soon after began performing on the British stage. In 1985, he starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Les Liaisons Dangerouses, originating the role of Le Vicomte de Valmont. He reprised the role in the RSC's production on Broadway in 1987, and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. Professing to prefer theatre over film, Rickman has turned down film roles that conflicted with his stage work. In 2002, he was again nominated for a Tony for Best Actor for his role in the revival of Noel Coward'sPrivate Lives, and for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor, and he won the Variety Club Show Business Award for Best Stage Actor for the role. Rickman became Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003.
Rickman has appeared in dozens of films, including January Man (1989), Quigley Down Under (1990), Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991— BAFTA Best Supporting Actor), Bob Roberts (1992), Mesmer (1994), An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Michael Collins (1996), Dogma (1999), Galaxy Quest (1999), Blow Dry (2001), Love Actually (2003), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and the Harry Potter series, beginning in 2001. Rickman made his feature directorial debut in 1997, in the film The Winter Guest, which he co-scripted with playwright Sharman MacDonald.
In 1995, Rickman gave an acclaimed perfomance in the title role of the HBO movie Rasputin, winning an Emmy Award. He was nominated for an Emmy Award again in 2004, for his role in the television movie Something the Lord Made, in which he played doctor Alfred Blalock.
Career Highlights: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Truly, Madly, Deeply, Dogma
First Major Screen Credit: Therese Raquin (1979)
Biography
Although he made his name playing ruthless, genteel villains like Die Hard's Hans Gruber and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' Sheriff of Nottingham, Alan Rickman has proven himself equally remarkable in romantic, comic, and good-guy dramatic roles. An actor of brooding charisma who intones his lines in a deep, milky baritone, Rickman began his career on-stage, building up a sizable resumé before embarking on a film career.
Of Irish and Welsh parentage, Rickman was born in London's Hammersmith district on February 21, 1946. His father, who was a painter and decorator, died of cancer when the actor was eight, leaving behind Rickman, his mother, and three siblings. After winning a scholarship to West London's Latymer Upper School, Rickman began acting at the encouragement of his teachers. He also developed an interest in art, and he went on to study graphic design at the Royal College of Art. He founded a Soho-based design company, but after deciding that his heart was in acting, he abandoned the company when he was 26 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He spent three years there, serving as a dresser to such actors as Ralph Richardson and Nigel Hawthorne. After leaving RADA, Rickman began to make his name on the stage, first appearing in repertory and then landing lead roles in London productions. He gained particular acclaim for his portrayal of Valmont in a West End production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, eventually reprising his role for the Broadway production and winning a Tony nomination.
In 1988, Rickman got his first dose of big-screen recognition with Die Hard. After the film's huge success, and praise for his delightfully nasty portrayal of the film's villain, he went on to make a couple of poorly received features, including 1989's The January Man and 1990s Quigley Down Under. Success greeted him again in 1991: playing Kevin Costner's nemesis, the vile and loathsome Sheriff of Nottingham, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rickman proved to audiences why being bad could be so much fun. The same year, he endeared himself as a markedly more sympathetic character in Truly, Madly, Deeply. As a deceased cellist who reappears to comfort his lover (Juliet Stevenson), Rickman proved himself adept at romantic comedy, and began to accrue a reputation as a thinking woman's sex symbol (something he vocally resented).
The actor spent the remainder of the decade turning in solid performances in a number of diverse films: he could be seen as an actor with a troubled past in An Awfully Big Adventure (1994), a very sympathetic Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1995), Eamon de Valera in Michael Collins (1996), a has-been sci-fi television star in Galaxy Quest (1999), and a grumpy angel in Dogma (1999). In 1997, Rickman branched out into directing, making his debut with The Winter Guest. Starring real-life mother and daughter Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson as an estranged mother and daughter, the film won a number of positive notices, further establishing Rickman as a man of impressive versatility, both in front of and behind the camera.
Though Rickman's voice would be featured on the animated television series King of the Hill in 2003, he wasn't truly absorbed into mainstream pop-culture among the kid circuit until after starring in the movie adaptations of author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Rickman played the sinister Professor Snape in the films, one of the few post-pubescent constants in the franchise.
In 2005, just months before the fourth installment in the Potter series, Rickman showed up in the first big-screen adaptation of another literary series with a rabid fan base, lending his voice to the character of Marvin the neurotic robot in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
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.[1] Rickman's mother was Welsh and a Methodist and his father was of Irish Catholic background,[2][3] 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.[4] 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.[2] 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,[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]
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.[2] 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?'"[8]
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 favourite 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."[12]
In 1995 Rickman turned down the role of Alec Trevelyan in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. Rickman has taken issue with being labelled 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.[1] 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.[13]
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. In 2009 Rickman ranked once again as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars by Empire, this time Rickman was placed 8th out of the 50 chosen. 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 sent 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.[15] The combination of his voice along with Jeremy Irons' voice was deemed the perfect male voice based on intonation, trustworthiness, and soothingness.
