Alan Rickman

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016) was an English actor and director.

Known for his distinctive deep, languid voice, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), performing in modern and classical theatre productions.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was born on 21 February 1946 in the Acton district of London, to housewife Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett) and factory worker, house painter and decorator, and former Second World War aircraft fitter Bernard William Rickman.

His mother was Welsh, and his paternal grandmother was Irish.

Margaret Rickman married again in 1960, but divorced Rickman's stepfather after three years.

Before Rickman met his longtime partner Rima Horton at age 19, he stated that his first crush was at 10 years old on a girl named Amanda at his school's sports day.

As a child, he excelled at calligraphy and watercolour painting.

Rickman was educated at West Acton First School followed by Derwentwater Primary School in Acton, and then Latymer Upper School in London through the Direct Grant system, where he became involved in drama.

Rickman went on to attend Chelsea College of Art and Design from 1965 to 1968.

He then attended the Royal College of Art from 1968 to 1970.

His training allowed him to work as a graphic designer for the Royal College of Art's in-house magazine, ARK, and the Notting Hill Herald, which he considered a more stable occupation than acting; he later said that drama school "wasn't considered the sensible thing to do at 18".

Following graduation, Rickman and several friends opened a graphic design studio called Graphiti, but after three years of successful business, he decided that he was going to pursue acting professionally.

He wrote to request an audition with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), which he attended from 1972 until 1974.

While there, he supported himself by working as a dresser for Nigel Hawthorne and Ralph Richardson.

After graduating from RADA, Rickman worked extensively with British repertory and experimental theatre groups in productions including Chekhov's The Seagull and Snoo Wilson's The Grass Widow at the Royal Court Theatre, and appeared three times at the Edinburgh International Festival.

On television, Rickman made his acting debut playing Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1978) as part of the BBC's Shakespeare series.

In 1978, he performed with the Court Drama Group, gaining roles in Romeo and Juliet and A View from the Bridge, among other plays.

While working with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), he was cast as Jaques in As You Like It, contributing an essay about his process to the RSC's book Players of Shakespeare 2.

His breakthrough role was Obadiah Slope in the BBC adaptation of The Barchester Chronicles (1982).

His breakthrough role was in The Barchester Chronicles (1982), the BBC's adaptation of Trollope's first two Barchester novels, as the Reverend Obadiah Slope.

He played the Vicomte de Valmont in the RSC stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, and after the production transferred to the West End in 1986 and Broadway in 1987, he was nominated for a Tony Award.

Rickman was given the male lead, the Vicomte de Valmont, in the 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by Howard Davies.

After the RSC production transferred to the West End in 1986 and Broadway in 1987, Rickman received both a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance.

Rickman's first film role came when he was cast as the German terrorist leader Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988).

In 1988, Rickman played the antagonist Hans Gruber in the action thriller Die Hard in what was his first feature film.

His other notable film roles include in Quigley Down Under (1990), Dogma (1999), Galaxy Quest (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 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 (1995), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and Michael Collins (1996).

He later starred in television films, portraying Grigori Rasputin in the HBO film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996), which won him a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award and played Alfred Blalock in the HBO film Something the Lord Made (2004).

He directed the films The Winter Guest (1997), and A Little Chaos (2014).

He went on to play Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series (2001–2011).

In 2009, The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

Rickman would later say in April 2015, "I was talking to Sharleen Spiteri about being a Celt, how you smell each other out, because my mother's family is Welsh. There's not a lot of English blood in me."

His father was Catholic and his mother was a Methodist.

He had two brothers named David and Michael and a sister named Sheila.

Rickman was born with a tight jaw, contributing to the deep tone of voice and languid delivery for which he would become famous.

Rickman himself said that a vocal coach told him he had a "spastic soft palate".

When he was eight years old, his father died of cancer, leaving his mother to raise him and his three siblings mostly alone.

According to biographer Maureen Paton, the family was "rehoused by the council and moved to an Acton estate to the west of Wormwood Scrubs Prison, where his mother struggled to bring up four children on her own by working for the Post Office".

Rickman died of pancreatic cancer on 14 January 2016 at age 69.