LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Alan Rickman: Roles
built 645 days ago
Rickman's progress into the public's consciousness was decidedly slow. As an actor his identity—cerebral, dry and sardonic—is very strong, and for years this meant that he was left slightly on the outside of a conventional career. But from the start he was an admired figure in the profession, working constantly with the same people, among them Peter Barnes, Adrian Noble, Richard Wilson, Stephen Poliakoff and Dusty Hughes, and taking on the role of confidant to friends such as Juliet Stevenson (they met at the RSC in 1978), Harriet Walter and Ruby Wax. Rickman and Ruby Wax followed each other around in the late 1970s, working together at Sheffield, Bristol and the RSC, and Rickman later produced and directed her early efforts as a writer and comedienne: Desperately Yours, which started life as a RSC fringe show (1978-79) but ended up in New York (1980); Live Wax (Edinburgh Festival, 1986); and Wax Acts (Tour and West End, 1992). Not satisfied with the actor's role, he became a member of the board at the Bush.
Source:
Rickman is now 61. Every day, he said soon after his 60th birthday, he looked in the shaving mirror and waved goodbye to another role. "Suddenly, you're 20 years too old for all those roles you planned to do." But while he may never play Hamlet again, he has recently had a succession of complex, substantial roles that include, as well as Alex in Snow Cake, Antoine Richis in Tom Tykwer's adaptation of Perfume, Sweeney Todd for Tim Burton, and the lead in another independent film, Nobel Son, in which he plays a bullying father who is ... a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Yes, he says sardonically, he is still very much here. Along with "a lot of other baby boomers.
Source:
Rickman demonstrated his talent as a comedic actor in films such as Galaxy Quest, Dogma, and Love Actually. He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance as Rasputin in 1996, and was ... nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred Blalock in 2004's Something the Lord Made. He played a crucial role in the Harry Potter films as the Potions professor Severus Snape. Rickman was cast in 2005 as the voice of Marvin in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. Coincidentally, Rickman and David Learner, who occupied Marvin's costume for the TV adaptation and stage shows, studied together at RADA. He was very busy in 2006 with Snow Cake (with Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss) which had its debut at the Berlinale, and also Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (with Dustin Hoffman), directed by Tom Tykwer.
Source:
In the meantime, Rickman had made up for disappearance of his hypnotic Mesmer by taking on the equally transfixing role of Rasputin. Of course, Christopher Lee had been superb in Hammer's earlier version of the mad monk's rise to power in the court of the last Tsar of Russia, but Rickman, matching Lee for intensity and outdoing him for intelligence, was magnificent, taking both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Then, having played such a ferocious libertine and open-hearted zealot, he took on the demanding role of the quiet, complicated and mercilessly pragmatic Eamon De Valera in Neil Jordan's Irish revolutionary epic, Michael Collins. By now, Rickman was confident in his abilities, yet this confidence was tested to its limit when he discovered his first scene involved making a speech to 5,000 Dubliners - with no rehearsal.
Source:
In this recent interview, Rickman is friendly, dry as a Beefeater martini without vermouth. He has mussed gray hair and hazel eyes that blend nicely with his charcoal sports coat. He muses on his love of roller coasters -- "you lose all thought" -- and the fear of empty spots between acting jobs. "That's part of the thrill."
Source:
In 1995, Rickman gave an acclaimed perfomance in the title role of the HBO movie Rasputin, winning an Emmy Award. He was nominated for an Emmy Award again in 2004, for his role in the television movie Something the Lord Made, in which he played doctor Alfred Blalock.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Roles