Alan Rickman, Best Villain and Best Voice, Remembered
Posted by Leah on
1/17/2016 11:10:43 AM
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The second week of January 2016 has been a difficult one in the world of pop culture. We lost not one, but two huge stars in the world of film and music, first with David Bowie on January 10, and followed by Alan Rickman on January 14.
Rickman began his acting career a little late, by today’s standards, at the age of 28. He exclusively worked on stage for the first four years of his acting career, and didn’t land an on screen role until the age of 32, playing Tybalt in a made for TV version of Romeo and Juliet. It wasn’t until Rickman was 42 years old that he made his big screen debut as the villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
After Die Hard, Rickman’s career took off. In the following years he played notable roles in The January Man, Truly Madly Deeply, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Sense and Sensibility, Dogma, Galaxy Quest, Love Actually, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Harry Potter films, among many others.
In 2003 Rickman was named by the American Film Institute (or AFI) as one of the top 100 cinema villains of all time for his roles in Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. On his role in Die Hard he’s quoted as saying, “As far as I'm concerned, I'm not playing 'the villain.' I'm just playing somebody who wants certain things in life, has made certain choices, and goes after them.” He was also quoted as saying, “I don't play villains, I play very interesting people.”
In 2008 Andrew Linn of Sheffield University conducted a study to find the “perfect” male voice. Alan Rickman’s was chosen, of the 50 famous male voices studied, as the “best voice in the world”. Some other awards he won throughout the years include one Golden Globe, one BAFTA, a SAG award and an Emmy.
It was revealed not long ago that Alan Rickman died of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed after a mini stroke in August 2015. While most of the rest of the details about his demise from the disease have not been made public, I felt a pang in my heart when I found out that pancreatic cancer is what took him. In December of 2008 my own grandfather died of pancreatic cancer. He had been diagnosed just 2 months before and the swiftness of his decline was remarkable. Before the cancer my grandfather had been a thick and sturdy man with a luxurious beard. He actually looked quite a bit like Santa Claus. When I saw him on his death bed he was a shell of his former self and couldn’t move or talk. While I know that there is no “good” cancer, pancreatic cancer is an especially aggressive and stealthy killer and is definitely a cancer that needs more research time and money.
For younger generations Alan Rickman will always be known as Professor Severus Snape of the Harry Potter films. The rest of us will remember him for so much more. He was and forever shall be one of the best villains of all time with “the best” deep and soothing voice. I think that Sir Ian McKellen says it best. Of Rickman he writes, “Behind his starry insouciance and careless elegance, behind that mournful face, which was just as beautiful when wracked with mirth, there was a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero, unassuming but deadly effective." And in Rickman’s own words he said “Making a gift of yourself is quite an active thing to do, quite a challenging thing to do; to your fellow actor or to the audience. It’s not a safe place to be.”
I hope I’ve inspired you all to find an Alan Rickman film you haven’t yet seen and watch it. While some of the films he was in aren’t that great, his characters are always impactful and memorable. The last two films he had parts in, Eye in the Sky and Alice Through the Looking Glass, will be in theaters later this year.