Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman ran a London graphic design studio called Graphiti before applying to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at twenty-six, having already studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art. Repertory and Royal Shakespeare Company work followed, then the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which carried him to Broadway and a Tony nomination in 1987. Film cast him as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which won him a BAFTA, Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, and Severus Snape across all eight Harry Potter films. He directed The Winter Guest and A Little Chaos. Madly, Deeply, edited by Alan Taylor with a foreword by Emma Thompson and issued by Canongate in 2022, collects the diaries he kept from 1993 until shortly before his death in January 2016 at sixty-nine, along with a selection from the 1970s.