His performance as criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in Die Hard has earned him a place as one of Hollywood’s most iconic villains, but Alan Rickman has revealed that he almost turned down the role.
Speaking at a Bafta celebration of his work, Rickman admitted that “having a film career at all is a bit of a surprise”. The British actor, who started out on the stage, recalled his initial disdain when he was offered his first film role, in Die Hard, two days after arriving in Los Angeles in 1987.
“I didn’t know anything about LA. I didn’t know anything about the film business … I’d never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap,” he said. After reading the script, he thought: “What the hell is this? I’m not doing an action movie.”
Rickman, who was 41 at the time, was won over by the wit of the script and the progressive storyline, which still stands out from other action films. “Every single black character in that film is positive and highly intelligent,” he said. “So, 28 years ago, that’s quite revolutionary, and quietly so.”
Rickman admitted that his lack of film experience had not stopped him from voicing opinions about Die Hard’s script. He decided it would be more interesting for his character to wear a suit than the full terrorist gear, and in one scene pretend to be a hostage. He then left a note on the producer Joel Silver’s table with his suggestions.
Rickman said: “I got Joel saying, ‘Get the hell out of here, you’ll wear what you’re told.’ But when I came back, I was handed a new script. It showed that it pays to have a little bit of theatre training.”
Rickman, who has acted and directed for stage and film, also said he enjoys the “risk factor” in his profession. “I like feeling a bit unsafe, and theatre, of course, is deadly.” He later added: “The good thing about starting late in this career is you go, ‘Well, what’s the worst that could happen?’”
The Bafta event was filled with anecdotes from working with directors including Neil Jordan and Anthony Minghella. Looking back on Ang Lee’s 1995 film Sense and Sensibility, he recalled how the director had “his own way of getting upset about something. He’d disappear off into the middle of a field with a cardboard box and a big pile of pink buns and sit there, thinking.”
Rickman also revealed that 1996 film Michael Collins, a historic biopic of the Irish civil war, in which he portrayed political figure Éamon de Valera, initially had an alternative conclusion. “We shot an ending that didn’t make it into the film, and I’m sad about that because I think that would have made it more equivocal,” said the actor. “But, of course, there’s pressure from Hollywood to have a happy ending.”
Rickman has been asked for years about whether JK Rowling revealed to him the outcome of Snape in the Harry Potter series to help him with the role. At Bafta he said the author gave him a single hint: “Jo Rowling gave me one piece of information, it wasn’t even a fact – I promised I would never share it and I never will – which made me know that whatever happened, I had to drive down two roads at the same time with this character, until all the facts emerged. So I knew there was ambiguity.”
The actor has “no regrets” about taking on the Harry Potter films,though it meant he had to put directing on hold for more than a decade. Rickman’s second directorial project, A Little Chaos, is released in cinemas this month.
“The job of directing it is absolutely terrifying,” he said. “But you realise you’ve learned so much down the line … like Anthony [Minghella]’s vulnerability on the set of Truly, Madly, Deeply. He gathered all the actors together on day one and said: ‘I have one word: help.’ … Ralph [Fiennes] gave me another piece of advice, which was, ‘The danger of directing yourself is that you are embarrassed about going for another take.’”
A Little Chaos, which Rickman appears in with Kate Winset and Stanley Tucci, tells the story of a female landscape gardener working for Louis XIV in the gardens of Versailles. Of Alison Deegan’s debut script, Rickman said he loved that it “tore the pages up of history”.
He added: “The central character is a woman landscape gardener – a woman who couldn’t have possibly existed. And it’s a male-dominated world, where women are merely decorative objects – weirdly, that has modern parallels still. So also I like that about it.”
