20 Harry Potter Actors Who Are No Longer With Us

1. Alan Rickman - Severus Snape

Though it's tempting to believe the suggestion that 2016 was a cursed year (given the talents we lost), to think so would rob each death of their true, personal importance. And nobody deserves that - particularly not Alan Rickman, who succumbed to cancer at the age of 69 (while looking 20 years younger).

He was one of Britain's true great actors: an idiosyncratic talent as comfortable playing grandiose pantomime villains in Die Hard as playing dependable romantic figures in Sense & Sensibility. He was a genuine Hollywood A-lister, immediately identifiable thanks to his purring voice and delightfully clipped delivery, and he remains a terribly raw loss.

For one so loved, he didn't actually make all that many films, nor drew many awards, but you can't think of the Sheriff of Nottingham or Hans Gruber or Severus Snape without thinking of him. And the complexity he brought to the latter in particular was a triumph.

For a lot of Rickman WAS Snape, and Snape was Rickman. And he will continue to live on as the character for as long as fans have love in their hearts for the franchise.

In other words... Always.

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