Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman, born February 21st, 1946 in Hammersmith London, England is an English actor. Rickman is a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in both Classical and Modern theatre productions. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Alan Rickman is best known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for which he won the BAFTA Award for best actor in a supporting role in 1991, Metatron in Dogma, The evil Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd and of course Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. Well obviously I can't talk about Alan Rickman's journey of portraying four completely different characters, so I'll just focus on my favourite one. Severus Snape, it doesn't …show more content…
Jany Temime, the costume designer for the Harry Potter films said that "nobody can work a cloak like Alan Rickman." However the thing that people admired most about Alan's performance as Snape is how he managed to keep a straight face while filming his scenes. Which must have been pretty challenging since most of his lines are really funny. For example in The Order of the Phoenix Imelda Staunton- the actress who plays Dolores Umbridge and Alan Rickman have a scene together where Imelda says to Alan "You applied first for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post is that correct?" And Alan replies "Yes." Then Imelda says "But you were unsuccessful?" And Alan replies "Obviously." But in one of his interviews Alan said he'd originally wanted to say "Obviously or I wouldn't be wasting my time talking to you." However David Heyman decided if Alan just said obviously and then slapped Rupert Grint across the back of the head with a magazine it would give the same message. I still don't know how they worked that one