 As a portrayer of cool, sophisticated villains, Alan Rickman ranks with the
best; his peers are such legends of suave on-screen villainy as Basil Rathbone,
George Sanders and Jules Berry. He can invest out-and-out baddie roles - Hans
Gruber in Die Hard (US, 1988), the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince
of Thieves (US, 1991), Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet
Street (US/UK, d. 2007) - with a near-pantomimic relish. But he's even more
effective at playing those characters whose malevolence is ambiguous, who may
yet be capable of redemption; this made him ideal casting for Professor Severus
Snape in the Harry Potter films (2001-2011), keeping us wondering right to the
end of the series whether he really had gone over to the dark side. His range
extends to romantic heroes, too - he was Juliet Stevenson's returning
ghost-lover in Truly Madly Deeply (d. Anthony Minghella, 1990), and wooed Kate
Winslet as Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (US, 1995) -
albeit they're almost always tinged with a sardonic edge.
He was born in Hammersmith into a working-class family of Irish-Welsh
descent, and grew up in a council house. He won a scholarship to Latymer School,
where he was involved in dramatic productions but also showed artistic talent,
and on leaving school studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and the
Royal College of Art. He set up a graphic design studio with two friends, but
acting still drew him and in 1972 (at the relatively late age of 26) he
successfully applied to RADA. After graduating in 1974 he spent the next four
years playing in rep all over the country - Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester,
Bristol - taking on everything from farce, light comedy and pantomime to
musicals and Shakespeare. In 1978 he joined the RSC but found the company too
hidebound and elitist, returning after a year to freelancing in rep.
His television debut - barring a televised stage production of Romeo and
Juliet (BBC, tx. 3/12/1978) - came in the BBC's three-part adaptation of
Zola's domestic grand guignol Thérèse Raquin (1980). It was a relatively minor
role; he attracted more attention in the John Le Carré spy thriller series
Smiley's People (BBC, 1982) and achieved fame the same year as the serpentine
schemer Rev Obadiah Slope in the seven-part BBC Trollope adaptation The
Barchester Chronicles, scripted by Alan Plater. (Not for the last time,
Rickman's portrayal of an odious character earned him copious fan-mail, mainly
from women.) In 1985 he rejoined the RSC, where he created the role of
arch-seducer Valmont in Christopher Hampton's dramatisation of Laclos' novel Les
Liaisons Dangereuses. The play transferred to New York, where Rickman was
nominated for a Tony award. He missed out on that, and lost the film role to John
Malkovich, but his performance was seen by producer Joel Silver, who offered him
his cinematic debut as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Rickman's performance set a fashion in Hollywood for smooth-spoken English
villains. It also showed that, for all his lack of big-screen experience, he was
a dangerously accomplished scene-stealer - as Kevin Costner found out three
years later. Even though Costner, as both co-producer and lead actor of Robin
Hood, notoriously cut down Rickman's scenes, the latter's flamboyant Sheriff of
Nottingham effortlessly made off with the film. In between he partnered Juliet
Stevenson, a friend and colleague from his earliest RSC days, in Anthony
Minghella's directorial debut, Truly Madly Deeply; and followed up Robin Hood
with an edgy performance as a man whose wife (Saskia Reeves) cuckolds him with
her own brother (Clive Owen) in Stephen Poliakoff's Close My Eyes (1991).
In Tim Robbins' political satire Bob Roberts (US, 1992) Rickman was
delectably hypocritical as spin doctor Lukas Hart III. The title role of Mesmer
(Canada/US, 1994) offered him impeccable casting as the 18th-century hypnotist
and perhaps charlatan, but the film, scripted by Dennis Potter, hit legal
problems and was held back from release. Drawing on his own experience, Rickman
played a former matinee idol reduced to provincial rep in the Liverpool-set An
Awfully Big Adventure (Eire/UK, d. Mike Newell, 1995), and further spoofed his
actorly image as the Dr Spock-figure in the Star Trek send-up Galaxy Quest (US,
1999). On TV he was a full-blooded Rasputin (tx. 23/3/1996) for HBO, while his
cold, calculating De Valera offset Liam Neeson's impulsive hero in Neil Jordan's
Michael Collins (UK/UK, 1996).
In the past decade the eight-film Harry Potter series has occupied much of
his career, though he found time to voice Marvin the Paranoid Android in the
film version of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (US/UK, d.
Garth Jennings, 2005) and the Blue Caterpillar in Tim Burton's eccentric version
of Alice in Wonderland (US, 2010). His sole foray into directing so far is The
Winter Guest (US/UK, 1997), adapted from a play that he also directed on stage
about four sets of intersecting characters in a Scottish village. Quietly
atmospheric, it was respectfully but not fervently received.
Philip Kemp
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FILM & TV CREDITS
