10 Great Actors Never Nominated For An Oscar

Perhaps best known for his well received work as the sinister but ultimately noble Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, Alan Rickman enjoyed an expansive career on stage, film and TV across 42 years of work.

A successful stage actor and Royal Shakespeare Company member, Rickman’s big screen breakout occurred in 1989 with action classic Die Hard. He portrayed prime baddie Hans Gruber, a sophisticated and audacious thief and terrorist. Rickman’s smart, slick and stylish Gruber was a notable departure from the more meatheaded, OTT villains of most '80s actioners, and proved a major influence on action villains heading into the '90s and '00s.

Along with excellent turns as P.L. O’Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure (1990) and as Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1995), Rickman’s biggest snub comes with his performance as Jamie in Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990). Sort of like a British, more intellectually stimulating Ghost, Rickman portrays a deceased cellist who returns to his grieving girlfriend as a ghost. What follows is a sad, occasionally funny story with a truly heart wrenching ending brought to life excellently by Rickman.

A great and often underrated talent of his generation, Rickman sadly passed away in 2016 but lives on through his fondly remembered work.