Alan Rickman had a remarkable rise to fame. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re looking at Alan Rickman’s unlikely journey to international stardom.
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00:00 - Carson, I trust you justify your intrusion
00:04 with news of profound value.
00:06 - Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're looking
00:09 at Alan Rickman's unlikely journey to international stardom.
00:13 - I played Richard III.
00:15 - Five curtain calls.
00:16 - There were five curtain calls.
00:18 - Early years.
00:20 - I think I had always known that I wanted to act,
00:24 but I was never quite sure of the route to that.
00:28 - Rickman was born to working class parents
00:30 in West London in 1946,
00:32 and he spent much of his childhood living in public housing.
00:35 After his father passed away from cancer
00:37 when Rickman was just eight years old,
00:39 his mother was forced to raise four children
00:41 on a postal worker's salary.
00:43 From a young age, Rickman was a talented artist,
00:46 and in grade school, he also discovered a love for theater.
00:49 After primary school, he enrolled
00:51 in the Chelsea College of Art and Design,
00:53 and later the Royal College of Art,
00:55 considering art to be a safer career path than theater.
00:58 - I don't know that I thought
01:00 this would be part of my life.
01:03 To be perfectly honest,
01:04 having a film career at all is a bit of a surprise.
01:08 - He went on to work for a successful graphic designer
01:10 for several years, even starting his own studio
01:13 with a few friends.
01:14 However, his love of acting soon called him
01:16 back to the stage.
01:17 After doing amateur theater for a time,
01:19 he applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
01:22 and was accepted, a move that he himself
01:24 said changed his life.
01:26 - You can see how the dots join up a bit,
01:29 and you see that the art school part of me
01:31 gets put together with the drama school part of me
01:35 and the theater part of me.
01:36 - Entrance into professional acting.
01:39 If you've seen Rickman in any major role,
01:41 you know that it seems like he was born
01:43 to be on the big screen.
01:45 But he didn't get his first on-screen role
01:47 until his 30s, and that was on TV.
01:50 - Stand me, Benvolio, and look upon thy death.
01:53 - After finishing drama school,
01:54 he began working as a stage actor
01:56 and soon landed major roles
01:58 with well-known theater companies.
01:59 His success was at least partly thanks
02:01 to his instantly recognizable voice
02:03 and unique way of speaking.
02:05 - That's true, she has resisted me
02:07 for more than two months now,
02:08 and that's very nearly a record,
02:09 but I really don't want to hurry things.
02:12 - This wasn't an affectation.
02:14 Rickman was forced to speak slowly
02:16 because of a birth defect that made his jaw stiff.
02:19 In the late 1970s, he starred onstage
02:22 as Sherlock Holmes and appeared
02:23 in a number of Shakespeare productions.
02:25 In 1978, he appeared on TV for the first time
02:28 as Tybalt in a BBC production of "Romeo and Juliet."
02:32 He would go on to have several more minor roles
02:34 on British television and major roles
02:36 in British theater throughout the 1980s.
02:39 - Sorry about the mess.
02:40 - Oh, no, no, no.
02:41 - No, no, no.
02:42 (audience laughing)
02:44 - Actually, it is pretty bad, isn't it?
02:46 - Die hard.
02:47 - Everything changed for Rickman in 1988
02:49 when his role as the villain Hans Gruber
02:51 shot him to overnight superstardom.
02:53 Producer Joel Silver saw Rickman perform on Broadway
02:57 as Le Vicomte de Valmont in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses,"
03:01 aka "Dangerous Liaisons,"
03:03 and knew he'd make the perfect big-screen baddie.
03:06 However, Rickman didn't immediately feel the same way.
03:09 - I read it and I said, "What the hell is this?
03:12 "I'm not doing an action movie."
03:14 - He wasn't sure he wanted to start his film career
03:17 with a project that was such a far cry
03:18 from any stage or TV role he had up to that point.
03:21 However, his friends convinced him
03:23 that the opportunity was too big to turn down,
03:26 and we're glad they did.
03:27 - When they touch down, we'll blow the roof.
03:29 They'll spend a month sifting through the rubble,
03:30 and by the time they figure out what went wrong,
03:33 we'll be sitting on a beach earning 20%.
03:36 - "Die Hard" was a smash hit,
03:38 with critics particularly praising Rickman's performance.
03:41 Hans Gruber consistently shows up on lists
03:43 of the greatest movie villains of all time,
03:46 thanks to Rickman's incredibly memorable performance.
03:49 - After all your posturing, all your little speeches,
03:52 you're nothing but a common thief.
03:54 - I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. MacLean.
03:58 - 1990s rise to fame.
04:00 Following the success of "Die Hard,"
04:02 offers for major movie roles began flooding in.
04:05 Rickman quickly accepted parts in two big-budget films,
04:08 1990s "Quigley Down Under"
04:10 and 1991's "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves."
04:13 While "Quigley" was a bit of a flop,
04:16 "Robin Hood" was a huge box office draw.
04:18 - Well, at least I didn't use a spoon.
04:20 It's good steel.
04:25 - Critics were lukewarm on the film,
04:27 but once again, they loved Rickman
04:29 as the evil sheriff of Nottingham,
04:31 and the performance earned him a BAFTA award
04:33 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
04:35 Understandably, Rickman began worrying
04:37 about being typecast as a villain.
04:39 - That's it then.
04:41 - Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans.
04:43 No more merciful beheadings.
04:46 And call off Christmas.
04:48 - To counter this, he turned down the role
04:50 of Bond villain Alec Trevelyan in "Goldeneye"
04:53 and accepted roles in smaller-budget movies
04:56 that allowed him to explore his range as an actor.
04:59 One of the most memorable and beloved of these
05:01 was the British film "Truly, Madly, Deeply,"
05:03 in which Rickman plays the ghost
05:05 of a woman's deceased boyfriend.
05:06 He finished out the decade
05:08 with parts in two more major films.
05:10 He played a snarky angel in Kevin Smith's "Dogma,"
05:13 and in "Galaxy Quest,"
05:14 he portrays a Shakespearean actor
05:16 who's annoyed that he's best known for playing an alien,
05:19 a part that seemed made for Rickman.
05:21 These roles enabled him to flex his comedic chops
05:24 for American audiences in a way he'd never done before.
05:27 - By Grabthar's hammer.
05:29 What a savings.
05:34 - Harry Potter.
05:36 In the 2000s, a new generation of fans
05:38 was introduced to Rickman
05:39 as the loathsome Professor Severus Snape.
05:42 Though today, it's almost impossible
05:44 to imagine any other actor in the role,
05:46 Rickman reportedly took a long time to commit to it.
05:49 - Has it ever crossed your brilliant mind
05:51 that I don't want to do this anymore?
05:54 - His hesitation is understandable,
05:56 considering he'd been working hard
05:58 to avoid being seen as nothing but a villain.
06:00 At the time he signed on to play Snape,
06:02 not all of the books had been released,
06:04 and we didn't know where the character was headed.
06:07 - I will attempt to penetrate your mind.
06:10 You will attempt to resist.
06:13 Prepare yourself.
06:15 - Contrary to popular rumors,
06:16 Rickman was almost as much in the dark as the fans.
06:19 However, J.K. Rowling did share one small detail
06:22 with Rickman early on,
06:24 the fact that his character
06:25 had once been in love with Lily Potter.
06:28 That knowledge enabled him
06:29 to play the seemingly villainous Snape
06:31 with even more depth and complexity.
06:34 - It's said to be nearly unbearable to witness,
06:37 but I'll do my best.
06:39 - Other 2000s roles.
06:41 Despite shooting eight Harry Potter movies
06:43 in just 10 years,
06:44 Rickman also managed to squeeze in other movie roles
06:47 and TV appearances in between.
06:49 He even directed plays in both New York
06:51 and London during this time.
06:53 - I was going to ask about
06:54 the different directors you work with.
06:55 Have you learned different things
06:56 from all of those directors?
06:57 - I think if you're smart, you learn from all of them,
07:00 and you watch them and think,
07:01 well, I wouldn't handle it like that.
07:03 So you learn from that as much as going,
07:05 well, I'm stealing that.
07:06 - Perhaps the most famous of his movies from the 2000s,
07:09 aside from Harry Potter, of course,
07:10 is Love Actually,
07:12 in which he got to play a romantic lead
07:14 for the first time in years.
07:16 His character, Harry, is torn between being loyal
07:19 to his wife and family
07:20 and pursuing an affair with a flirtatious young employee.
07:24 - I am so in the mood.
07:27 A classic fool.
07:29 - The tireless actor also showed up
07:31 in other major movies like Sweeney Todd,
07:33 The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,
07:35 as well as lesser known and independent films
07:37 like romantic dramedy, Snowcake.
07:40 - I can make it up, right?
07:41 - Yes, that's the best bit.
07:43 - Okay.
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08:00 Final years.
08:02 Rickman never slowed down.
08:04 Even in the last years of his life,
08:05 he continued showing up on the big screen
08:07 in both major and minor movies,
08:09 including a brief but memorable turn as Ronald Reagan
08:13 in Lee Daniels, The Butler.
08:14 - I sometimes fear I'm on the wrong side of it
08:20 and I'm just wrong.
08:23 - In 2014, he stepped into the role of director
08:26 for A Little Chaos, a period drama,
08:28 which he also co-wrote and appeared in as King Louis XIV.
08:32 He also teamed up with Tim Burton again
08:35 to provide the voice of Absalom,
08:37 the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.
08:39 He even returned to the stage to star in not one,
08:41 but two plays, John Gabriel Borgman,
08:44 which he performed in both Dublin and New York
08:46 and Seminar, which premiered on Broadway.
08:49 - It doesn't matter that there's no subject
08:51 or story or idea.
08:53 (audience laughing)
08:56 It's got power.
08:57 - In 2016, Rickman tragically passed away
09:00 from pancreatic cancer.
09:02 The news came as a shock to many of his former colleagues,
09:04 especially since the actor had only shared his diagnosis
09:07 with a few people.
09:08 Many fellow actors shared tributes,
09:10 raving about his warmth and kindness,
09:13 and fans even created a memorial to the late star
09:16 at the Platform 9 3/4 sign at King's Cross Station.
09:19 Though his entry to Hollywood stardom
09:21 came relatively late in life,
09:23 he left behind a legacy that will last long after his passing.
09:27 - Which is to give people a good time,
09:29 to go to the movies and have a night off from life,
09:33 really, is what that is.
09:35 - Which of Alan Rickman's roles
09:36 do you think is the most iconic?
09:38 Let us know in the comments.
09:40 - I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory,
09:44 and even put a stopper in death.
09:48 - Do you agree with our picks?
09:49 Check out this other recent clip from Ms. Mojo,
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