Alan Rickman

It’s been one full day now since the news of Alan Rickman’s passing first surfaced, and while that may be the regulation time period for mourning, say, a casual work acquaintance or distant relative, many are still stinging over the loss of this esteemed actor...

This morning’s big Oscar nominations announcement had to contend with an even more major and affecting piece of breaking news. A few days after David Bowie passed into the next dimension, cancer has taken another sixty-nine-year-old Brit from us: esteemed actor Alan Rickman. Flip to the word “arch” in the newest editions of the Oxford Goes To Hollywood dictionary, and there you’ll find a photo of Rickman, single eyebrow raised, his tone of dour bemusement audible even from the printed page. The man gained the most international recognition from a choice role in a certain franchise about a boy wizard, but he was an actor of boundless versatility who gifted audiences plenty of fond moviegoing memories.

Alan Rickman was a great villain and actor. His first film that I remember was Die Hard. He was the mastermind Hans Gruber to Bruce Willis' John McCain. Next he was in Robin Hood, The Prince of Thieves. There he was the sheriff of Nottingham to Kevin Costner's Robin Hood in 1995, along with Morgan Freeman, "The Painted Man...

Alan Rickman, the tremendously talented British actor behind such iconic roles as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, has died at the age of 69 following a bout with cancer.