When Alan Rickman was in his 40s, he took on two roles that proved life-changing. One was the criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in the 1988 thriller Die Hard, and the other was the similarly devilish Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Rickman, who went on to play Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, became known as one of the great movie villains, an actor who was magnetic in his menace and fury.
But if there’s one thing to be gleaned from Rickman’s diaries, it’s that he was not one to bask in his successes. Despite the many doors that Die Hard and Robin Hood opened for him, the films are tetchily referenced. This is partly because Rickman didn’t regard them as his finest work – on collecting a Bafta for Robin Hood, he said: “This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn’t everything” – but also because of the interviewers who insisted on quizzing him about them, years later. “They are like tired dogs with a very old slipper,” he carps.
