Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016) was an English actor. He was renowned for his stage and screen roles and for his deep and distinctive voice. He received various accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and an Actor Award, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award. In 2009, The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Rickman died of pancreatic cancer on 14 January 2016, at the age of 69.
Rickman studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before becoming a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company where he began his career in theatre, performing in classical and modern plays. He made his film debut as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988). He won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). He earned critical acclaim for Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), An Awfully Big Adventure, Sense and Sensibility (both 1995), and Michael Collins (1996).
He went on to play Severus Snape in all eight films of the Harry Potter series (2001–2011) and took memorable roles in Quigley Down Under (1990), Dogma, Galaxy Quest (both 1999), Love Actually (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010), its 2016 sequel, and Eye in the Sky (2015). He directed the films The Winter Guest (1997) and A Little Chaos (2014). On television, he portrayed Grigori Rasputin in the HBO film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996) and Alfred Blalock in the HBO film Something the Lord Made (2004), the former of which won him a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
On stage, he made his Broadway debut starring as Le Vicomte de Valmont in the Christopher Hampton play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1987) for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play. He starred as a newly married man in the revival of Nöel Coward's comedic play Private Lives (2002) on the West End and on Broadway, earning a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for the former. For his role as an imperious professor in the Theresa Rebeck play Seminar (2011) he was nominated for the Drama League Award.
