Alan Rickman biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Born February 21, 1946 in West London, England, Alan Sydney Patrick Rickman was the second of four children born to Bernard Rickman, an Irish Catholic factory worker, and Margaret Doreen Rose Rickman, a Welsh Methodist housewife. Rickman later recalled his early years as impoverished but very happy, until his father died of lung cancer when young Alan was just 8 years old.

After showing an early predilection for art, Rickman won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he appeared in several school plays, and then studied graphic design at Chelsea College Of Art And Design and the Royal College Of Art. After graduating, he started a graphic design company, Graphiti, with some friends. He met his lifetime partner Rima Horton in 1965 while in the amateur Group Court Drama Club.

At age 25, Rickman decided to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. "There was an inevitability about my being an actor since about the age of 7, but there were other roads that had to be traveled first," he later said. "A voice in the head saying, 'It's time to do it. No excuses.'" Rickman supported himself through his two years at the RADA by taking freelance design jobs and by working as a set dresser.

In 1978, Alan Rickman joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in The Tempest and Love's Labour's Lost, among others, although he disliked the experience: "It's a factory," he said. "It has to be. It's all about product endlessly churned out—not sufficiently about process. They don't look after the young actors... People are dropping like flies, doing too many shows at once. There ought to be someone who helps them develop." Moving on from the RSC, Rickman spent much of the rest of the 1980s acting in BBC serials, radio dramas and repertory theatre.

Breakthrough Role and Later Career

The turning point in Rickman's career came in 1985 when he took on the starring role of Le Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a part that playwright Christopher Hampton (who adapted the script from an 18th-century French novel) developed with the actor specifically in mind. "Alan was able to transfix not only the viewer," Hampton said, "but he also seemed to have a kind of hypnotic effect on the people he was playing his scenes with." Rickman performed the unforgettably villainous role first in London's West End and then on Broadway, earning a Tony Award nomination. In 1988, Les Liaisons Dangereuses made the leap to the big screen (as Dangerous Liaisons) and the better-known John Malkovich took over the iconic part. But Rickman had made his mark.

Having impressed as the deliciously malevolent Vicomte de Valmont, Rickman was soon tapped for his first Hollywood film role, as the impossibly evil terrorist Hans Gruber (ultimately foiled by Bruce Willis' heroic cop John McClane) in Die Hard (1988). "I got Die Hard," Rickman later recalled, "because I came cheap. They were paying Willis $7 million so they had to find people they could pay nothing."