I am going to count to three. There will not be a four...
Film Appearance(s): Die Hard (1988) In at number one is Hans Gruber; the master criminal trying to pull off the heist of the century under the guise of a terrorist attack in Die Hard. Gruber is a suave, classically educated villain who is a million miles away from the generic villains of most eighties action films. The reason? Alan freakin Rickman. A London born, former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, would not be most peoples first choice for a German bad guy in 1988 but Rickman, in his first big screen appearance, brings a certain gravitas to the role and threatened to steal the film from under Bruce Willis nose. His sneering, snobbish performance proved the perfect foil to Willis working class hero and that dynamic helped make Die Hard one of the greatest action films of all time. They say every hero is only as good as their villain; if thats true then without Rickmans Gruber its possible we would never have seen John McClane again. Did You Know?...The scene where Gruber and McClane meet for the first time was only inserted during pre-production after John McTiernan found out that Rickman could do an American accent. The scene was also Rickman's first on-set and he injured his knee jumping off a ledge. For the rest of that scene Rickman had to stand on one leg due to the pain and wore a brace under his trousers. That's the list finished. We hope you enjoyed it. Please let us know in the comments section below which other non-British villains played by British actors get your back up...
