Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of the stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, Eamon de Valera in Michael Collins, and Metatron in Dogma. Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Rickman was born in South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family. When he was eight, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up four children mostly alone. She married again, but divorced his stepfather after three years. "There was one love in her life," Rickman later said. Rickman excelled at calligraphy and watercolour painting, and from Derwentwater Junior School he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he started getting involved in drama. After leaving Latymer, Rickman attended Chelsea College of Art and Design and then the Royal College of Art. "Drama school wasn't considered the sensible thing to do at 18," he said. After graduation, Rickman and several friends opened a graphic design studio called Graphiti, but after three years of successful business, he decided that if he were to ever explore acting professionally, it was now or never. This led him to write a letter to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) requesting an audition and was awarded a place in RADA which he attended from 1972–74. While there, he studied Shakespeare's works and supported himself by working as a dresser for Sir Nigel Hawthorne and Sir Ralph Richardson, and left after winning several prizes, including the Emile Littler Prize, the Forbes Robertson Prize, and the Bancroft Gold Medal.
After graduating from RADA. In 1978, he played with the Court Drama Group, performing in several plays, most notably Romeo And Juliet and A View from the Bridge. While working with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) he starred in, among other things, As You Like It.
In 1982, British television audiences came to know Alan Rickman as the Reverend Obadiah Slope in the BBC's adaptation of Barchester Towers known as The Barchester Chronicles. In 1985, Rickman was given the male lead, the Vicomte de Valmont, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by Howard Davies. When the show went to Broadway in 1987, Rickman earned both a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance. Rickman's career has been filled with a wide variety of roles. He has played romantic leads like Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, as well as numerous villains in Hollywood big budget films: most recently Severus Snape, the potions master in the Harry Potter series. In 1995, Rickman turned down the role of Alec Trevelyan in the James Bond film GoldenEye. His role in Die Hard earned him a spot on the AFI's 100 years...100 Heroes & Villains as the 46th best villain in film history. His performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also made him known as one of the best actors to portray a villain in films. He has taken issue with being typecast as a "villain actor", citing the fact that he has not portrayed a stock villain character since the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991. During his long career Rickman has also played a number of comedic roles, sending up classically trained British actors who take on "lesser roles" as the character Sir Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus in the science fiction spoof Galaxy Quest, portraying the angel Metatron, the voice of God, in Dogma, appearing as Emma Thompson's foolish husband Harry in Love Actually, providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the egotistical, Nobel Prize-winning father in Nobel Son. He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance as Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny in 1996, and was also nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred Blalock in 2004's Something the Lord Made. He also starred in the independent film Snow Cake (with Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss) which had its debut at the Berlinale, and also Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (with Dustin Hoffman), directed by Tom Tykwer. In 2007, Rickman appeared in the critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street directed by Tim Burton; Rickman also appeared as Absolem the Caterpillar in Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland. Rickman has performed on stage in Noël Coward's romantic comedy Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway after its successful run in London at the Albery Theatre and ended in September 2002. Rickman had reunited with his Les Liaisons Dangereuses co-star Lindsay Duncan and director Howard Davies for this Tony Award-winning production. His previous stage performance was as Mark Antony, opposite Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, in the Royal National Theatre's production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London. Before that, he performed in Yukio Ninagawa's Tango at the End of Winter in London's West End and the Riverside Studio production of Hamlet in 1991, directed by Robert Sturua. Rickman had also directed The Winter Guest at London's Almeida Theatre in 1995 and the film version of the same play in 1996 starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother Phyllida Law. He also compiled and directed the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and won the Theatre Goers' Choice Awards for best director. In May 2010, he finished directing Strindberg's play Creditors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theatre after its previous run at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2008. In 2009 Rickman was given the James Joyce Award by University College Dublin’s Literary and Historical Society. In October and November 2010, Rickman starred in the eponymous role in Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Lindsay Duncan and Fiona Shaw. He earned his first award nominations for his role as Snape at the 2011 Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards, 2011 Scream Awards and 2011 St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards in the Best Supporting Actor category. On 21 November 2011, Rickman opened in Seminar, a new play by Theresa Rebeck, at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway. He is to star with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in a remake of 1966's Gambit by the Coen brothers. Rickman was chosen by Empire as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (No 34) in 1995 and ranked No 59 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997. In 2009 and 2010 Rickman ranked once again as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars by Empire, both times Rickman was placed 8th out of the 50 actors chosen. Rickman became Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003. He was voted No 19 in Empire magazine's Greatest Living Movie Stars over the age of 50 and was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actor (Play): in 1987 for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and in 2002 for a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives. Two researchers, a linguist and a sound engineer, found "the perfect [male] voice" to be a combination of Rickman's and Jeremy Irons's voices based on a sample of 50 voices. Coincidentally, the two actors played brothers in the Die Hard series of films. Rickman has also been featured in several musical works – most notably in a song composed by the English songwriter Adam Leonard entitled "Not Alan Rickman". Moreover, the actor played a "Master of Ceremonies" part in announcing the various instruments in Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II on the track The Bell. Rickman was one of the many artists who recited Shakespearian sonnets on the 2002 album When Love Speaks, and is also featured prominently in a music video by the band Texas entitled "In Demand", which premiered on Europe MTV in August 2000. In the video, lead singer Sharleen Spiteri danced the tango with Rickman: the clip was nominated for Best British Video at the Brit Awards.
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