There are some actors, say Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose natural charisma prevails over every character they play, so it isn't a trait that's necessarily easy to master. There is a charisma that shines through, which leads to another element that Rickman brought to the game: his ability to turn it off. Twistedly so, but still somewhat likable. Yet even with all of this, his villains are likable. Rowling gave Rickman just a hint of the endgame for Snape early on in filming the series, making the performance just that much more layered and impressive. The real magic, if you will, of that performance is how it then changes one's perception of the character's actions in the preceding films. All of it done without speaking a single word. Yet as he lay dying in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, everything in his face says so much: the pain of lost love, the heartache, his torn attachment to Harry. His stone face belies little, leading the viewer to believe him to be villainous, to believe his loyalities lie with Lord Voldemort ( Ralph Fiennes). Throughout the series, his line delivery is dripping with contempt and deliberateness, with Snape's "Hello, Potter" still able to send chills down one's spine. Perhaps the best example of this is in the Harry Potter films. At the other end of the scale, Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham from 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves allowed for scene-chewing and outlandish behavior, and in the screen time given he runs with it, fills that space to make what could have been a throwaway role into something more, gifting us with "Locksley, I'll cut your heart out with a spoon" (because it's dull and will hurt more, of course).Īnother of Rickman’s strengths was his balance of verbal and non-verbal cues to deepen the character. In the Harry Potter series of films, It would have been incredibly easy for him to chew up the scenery as Severus Snape, making him larger than life, but that would have been completely inappropriate for the role and, more importantly, would overstep the boundaries of his supporting role. Spock).Ī tricky talent that he expertly managed was his ability to fill the space with what was given to his character, in both screen time and emotion. Lazarus in a juvenile, silly piece of sci-fi nonsense, doomed to relive the role at fan conventions for time eternal (somewhat unrelated, it's also a brilliant send-up of Leonard Nimoy's love/hate relationship with his role as Dr. Although his Sir Alexander Dane wasn’t a villain in that film, his actions, his line delivery, and his resignation made it clear just how much he believed that he should be remembered and acknowledged for far more than having played the alien Dr. Rickman would satirize that arrogance to a degree in Galaxy Quest. And he holds that arrogance right to the end, pulling out a gun on McClane in a final, bitter refusal to admit defeat. It's easy to see in Die Hard, where his Hans Gruber downplays John McClane ( Bruce Willis) as nothing more than an irritant (a deadly irritant, but one nonetheless), unable to halt his plan, which includes his smug knowledge of FBI procedure that falls right into it. This is a very obvious facet he could turn on and off, as Rickman was often noted for his wonderful offscreen presence. Generally speaking, there’s an air of arrogance about Rickman in his villainous roles, a sense that he’s above all the other characters in the film. But what is it about his performances that made him so good at being so bad? All these villains were made iconic by the prolific actor. And if that character was a villain, as was often the case, Rickman owned it. He excelled in the characters he played, and more often than not he elevated the material simply by appearing in the film. Alan Rickman was a great actor, a statement which is undeniably true.
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