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Emmy-Winning Actor Dies — Known for ‘Die Hard,’ ‘Harry Potter’ Movies

Jan 14, 2016  •  Post A Comment

A popular actor known for his performances both on the big screen and on television has died. Alan Rickman reportedly died this morning in London after a battle with cancer. He was 69.

Rickman won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as Grigori Rasputin in the 1996 HBO movie “Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny.” But he may have been best known as villain Hans Gruber in “Die Hard” and the morally ambiguous Severus Snape in the “Harry Potter” feature films.

He had a long list of acclaimed film performances, including “Michael Collins,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Galaxy Quest,” “Truly Madly Deeply” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

In 2004 he received an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for “Something the Lord Made.”

The British-born Rickman was also a director, with credits that included directing Emma Thompson in the 1997 release “The Winter Guest” and Kate Winslet in “A Little Chaos,” released in 2014.

ABC News notes: “Rickman first came to wide notice in 1988, stealing the show as the snide terrorist Hans Gruber opposite Bruce Willis in ‘Die Hard.’ But he proved he was equally adept at playing comedy in films like ‘Dogma,’ in which he played a sarcastic angel, and ‘Galaxy Quest,’ playing an embittered former star of a ‘Star Trek’-like TV show.”

Here’s a brief clip of Rickman’s appearance last June on NBC’s “Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon”:

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