I’m still not ready for Alan Rickman to be gone.
I was lucky enough to interview him once. There was so little time when he was here for Bottle Shock in 2008. I did, though, get in a question that mixed two things about which he was passionate, though — art and politics as evinced in a production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” which he had directed and co-written.
My favorite moment of my close encounter with Rickman didn’t come when I talked with him. It was just before, when he gently but firmly explained to the person preceding me in the press day lineup that he never discussed the Harry Potter films, or his role in them as Severus Snape. And this was because, he said, he didn’t want to ruin the illusion for the younger fans.
Here are three of his non-blockbuster films that you may have missed, and if you didn’t, would be a wonderful way to remember him, starting with NOBEL SON, moving on to LOVE, ACTUALLY, and finally, PERFUME. He will always be remembered for his wizarding turn, and for that iconic “ho ho ho” in the original DIE HARD, which also launched his film career, but his range went far beyond being superbly villainous on screen, though his Sheriff George of Nottingham in Kevin Costner’s ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES is, arguably, the primary reason to sit through that uncertain version of the hero of Sherwood Forest.
I was alway grateful that hadn’t been one of my questions. And that I had brought a copy of one of his wildly romantic turns in Truly, Madly, Deeply for him to autograph.
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