EYE ON ALAN RICKMAN A BLOCKBUSTER VILLAIN

By Joseph Hurley

(Newsday, 1988)

ALSO STARRING

ONE OF THE THINGS that Alan Rickman achieved during the 16-week Los Angeles shooting schedule of "Die Hard," in which the 42-year-old Londoner plays the chief villain, was learning to drive.

"I don't do the freeways," he admits, "but I'm fine on the ordinary streets." The faster, more demanding wheelwork can wait for future Hollywood trips, of which there should be many, considering the impact Rickman has made in the role of Gruber, commander of a gang of mainly European thieves intent on pulling off a huge heist in a California office tower.

"Die Hard" has given Rickman, whom Broadway audiences saw last season as Le Vi- comte de Valmont in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," a newly pumped-up visibility in the street - although some of it may be a bit off-center, as was the case with one couple who recently approached him.

"Aren't you," the husband asked, approaching the actor nervously, "in that new movie . . . 'High Rise?' "

Rickman, the son of an Irish father and a Welsh mother is a graduate of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Filming his first major movie turned out to be a major joy. "There's lot of time to sit and talk," he says, "and if you get it wrong, they give you a chance to do it again. In the theater, nobody says 'cut.' If you go wrong, you go wrong and that's that."

Playing the manipulative French aristocrat, Valmont, in Christopher Hampton's controversial stage adaptation of the celebrated epistolary 18th century novel by Choderlos de Laclos took its toll on Rickman. "It was very draining to do 'Les Liaisons' for two years," he says, "first in rep at the Royal Shakespeare Company, then in the West End and finally here in New York. It was difficult, playing someone who outwardly seemed so expansive and yet who in reality, internally, was negative and cramped."

Rickman may find himself typecast for villainy by his rather vulpine features, including translucent hazel eyes which, in repose, seem slightly chilly.

Acting, in a way, is Rickman's second career, since he initially went to art school and worked for three years in a graphic design house. Artistic ability is something the actor takes nearly for granted. "You need a sense of space just to walk onto a stage," he says, "even when it comes to relating to the other actors and to the furniture."

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page