Vale: Alan Rickman

There is a very very small list of actors/actresses in the history of acting. That list comprises people who, no matter what movie or show they are in, no matter whether it is hugely popular and enjoyable or complete trash and rubbish, their performance is still hugely watchable or captivating.

Alan Rickman was most certainly on that list.

His sad passing today of cancer allows us to reflect on his wonderful and perhaps understated career. He rarely appeared as a leading man but he almost always stole the screen in every movie he appeared in. Some no one knows about. As Ed the painter alongside Kevin Kline in The January Man. As the Metatron in Dogma. As the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Wonderful.

As terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard he was superb. If not for him playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves it would have been a disaster. He and Tim McInerny made Sense and Sensibility slightly less tedious. His role as Harry in Love Actually was subtlely superb. No one could ever have brought Severus Snape to existence on the screen so brilliantly and believably as he did. And one of his finest performances will never receive the recognition it deserves, as it was in the Sci-Fi parody Galaxy Quest. In which he was brilliant.

So many performances left unsaid here. But for me he is firmly in this exclusive list of genius performers.

Thanks for everything Alan. "By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged".