 The versatile Alan Rickman, of Irish-Welsh parentage, began his stage career after RADA and scored a great success in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
His first film role came in 1988 when he was asked to play the villain in Die Hard (US, d. John McTiernan) and he played another memorable villain, the Sheriff of Nottingham, in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (US, d. Kevin Reynolds, 1991).
He has established a somewhat languid persona in films since, including Close My Eyes (d. Stephen Poliakoff, 1991), for which he won Best Actor at the 1991 Seattle International Film Festival; Truly Madly Deeply (d. Anthony Minghella, 1991), as the ghostly husband; Sense and Sensibility (US/UK, d. Ang Lee, 1995) as the melancholy Colonel Brandon, and Michael Collins (US, d. Neil Jordan, 1996), for all of which he was BAFTA nominated.
Later international films included Blow Dry (UK/Germany/US, d. Paddy Breathnach, 2001) and The Search for John Gissing (UK/US, d. Mike Binder, 2001), and he directed The Winter Guest (UK/US, 1997), a gloomy Scottish-set drama of grief and possible recovery. His TV included a marvellously unctuous Rev. Slope in the serial Barchester Chronicles (BBC, 1982).
Biography: Alan Rickman by Maureen Paton (1996).
Anne-Marie Thomas, Encyclopaedia of British Cinema
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