Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the
Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a
Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in
Die Hard,
Severus Snape in the
Harry Potter film series,
Éamon de Valera in
Michael Collins, and
Metatron in
Dogma.
Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the
Sheriff of Nottingham in
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in
Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in
An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in
Ang Lee's 1995 film
Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of
Stephen Sondheim's musical of
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Early life
Rickman was born in
South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker.
Rickman's mother was from
Wales and a
Methodist, and his father was of
Irish Catholic background.
He has one elder brother, David (b. 1944), a
graphic designer, a younger brother, Michael (b. 1947), a tennis coach, and a younger sister, Sheila (b. 1949).
[Alan Rickman Family Info NNDB.com. Retrieved 4 September 2010.] Rickman attended Derwentwater Primary School, in
Acton, a school that followed the
Montessori method of education.
