Alan Rickman, the legendary British actor, has died of cancer aged 69. Rickman was in an ordinate amount of great films that people actually watch—look at your DVD shelf and he’s everywhere, in the Harry Potter films as please-don’t-spank-me-sir teacher crush Snape, as the cheating boss of a company that doesn’t seem to do anything in Love Actually, as the floppy-haired East German emo Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and as the best fucking caterpillar we’ve ever seen in Alice in Wonderland.
As well as being a beloved actor, for many people Rickman was also something of a heartthrob. In 2013, we made a film about women who were sexually obsessed with Alan, a heartfelt and often graphic insight into the very essence of what made him such a striking man. As one of the interviewees says, “For him to gift you with a smile or a thought, takes so long and there’s such a process that by the time he gives it to you, it’s like it’s been dragged—through treacle or war.”
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Your favorite Rickman film is something of a generational marker. Children of the 80s had the good fortune of seeing him as a surprisingly open-buttoned Sheriff of Nottingham. For the younger crowd he’ll forever be the gothy potions professor who spoke in a register only Barry White can hear.
Rickman directed and starred in many other plays and films, he appeared in music videos and even spoofed himself in Galaxy Quest—but he made his name not as the star of the show, but as the bit you always looked forward to.
