It's crazy to think that Hans Gruber, one of the film's greatest ever bad guys, was Alan Rickman's first film role. And he probably wouldn't appreciate us saying this, but although he's had many stellar performances throughout his long and varied career, he's never topped his work in Die Hard. Hans Gruber was an iconic character that dominated every inch of the screen. He was debonair, dangerous, and cool as a cucumber. If it wasn't for the macho charisma that Bruce Willis brought to the film, we all probably would have been rooting for Gruber to win. Sure, Severus Snape is great, but in a weird way, by the time the Harry Potter franchise rolled around, the performance felt a little bit like the same old Alan Rickman that we'd been seeing for quite some time. When he did Die Hard, though, we hadn't seen it yet. It was a fresh, exciting new style of acting that was uniquely his. No matter how good his performances are, you're never going to be able to recreate the magic of the first time we ever saw him.