10 Movie Directors That Lied To Get What They Wanted

Die Hard is one of, if not the, most celebrated action flicks of the 1980s. It gave us Bruce Willis at his most heroic, a bevy of iconic lines and the eternal debate about what does and doesn’t constitute a Christmas movie.

Die Hard was also responsible for kicking off the late-blooming career of the incomparable Alan Rickman who played cunning antagonist Hans Gruber.

One of Rickman’s finest moments of the film is the ending and ultimate defeat of Gruber, culminating in an iconic composite shot of Rickman falling to his doom from Nakatomi Plaza. After being shot by John McClane, Gruber clutches onto the wrist-watch of hostage Holly for dear life. In the moments before his inevitable death, he might be able to take at least someone else with him and takes aim with his pistol before McClane detaches the watch and Gruber falls.

The look on Rickman’s face, however, is genuine surprise and fear.

The stunt involved Rickman falling 25-feet on a sound-stage to an airbag below. Naturally a carefully planned and safe scene, nonetheless director John McTiernan got a genuine expression of panic out of Rickman by asking the stunt coordinators to release him early. Counting down to the moment of his drop, Rickman suddenly found himself dropping at “two” rather than “three”.