Even after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005, Harry Potter franchise star Alan Rickman decided to remain with the film series. In an excerpt from an upcoming book collecting his personal writings, Rickman explained the decision simply, writing that he felt obligated to see the role through, a compulsion that ultimately won out over any arguments against spending the last years of his life working. The entry is only one of a number of installments in his journal that detail his work on the Harry Potter films, with other entries touching on the fact that J.K. Rowling had revealed key aspects of Snape’s character to him in confidence.
One 2007 entry indicated that the revelation, told to him early on by Rowling, that Snape loved Harry Potter’s mother, Lily, “gave me a cliff edge to hang onto.”
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“Finally, yes to HP 5,” Rickman wrote before production launched on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “The sensation is neither up nor down. The argument that wins is the one that says: ‘See it through. It’s your story.’”
“I have finished reading the last ‘Harry Potter’ book,” Rickman wrote in that same year. “Snape dies heroically, Potter describes him to his children as one of the bravest men he ever knew and calls his son Albus Severus. This was a genuine rite of passage. One small piece of information from Jo Rowling seven years ago – Snape loved Lily – gave me a cliff edge to hang on to.”
Rickman’s breakout role was the villainous Hans Gruber in Die Hard, where he impressed millions of viewers with his distinctive British accent and deliberate diction. Rickman was best known for playing villains in movies, most notably as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films and the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 version of Robin Hood. One of most acclaimed roles was as the mad monk Rasputin in the 1995 HBO film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny, which earned him both an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award. However, he could also play romantic roles too, such as in the popular films Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually. He also served as the Metatron — an angel who is the literal voice of God — in Kevin Smith’s 1999 film Dogma.
Henry Holt and Company will release Madly Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, a collection of Rickman’s handwritten diaries, in October 2022.
