Remembering Alan Rickman

2020-01-14

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman
February 21, 1946 – January 14, 2016

My first encounter with Alan Rickman was in Die Hard where he played Hans Gruber. He brought depth and texture and surprise to what could have been a submediocre villan and aside from the rather hokey fall to his death from high up in the Nakatomi Tower it was a very satisfying experience through and through.

Over the years I would encounter him either playing or voicing characters in various productions and his was a sustaining performance whereby he added to the ensemble playing immensely and oh, those portrayals were often something to behold.

I enjoyed him as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves even though I found the entire topic tired otherwise — having been well enough read to encounter the story more times than I can count.

Not being of the Harry Potter generation I declined to watch the entire series and those accolades he received for Professor Severus Snape were beyond my purview and indeed, with his untimely passing in January of 2016 I dare say they all deserve an initial watching ...

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was a classically trained thespian and it shined through performance after performance. He was at once hilarious and heroic as Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest and soothed the tedium of that production as Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sweeny Todd, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet

He died of pancreatic cancer on January 14, 2016 at age 69. I can sometimes still hear Absolem, the caterpillar in Alice Through the Looking Glass speaking in those echos of my mind to this day.

Few will stand those tests of acting prowess with the skills to project that inner truth which is the essence of character portrayal quite like him. Rest in Peace.