20 Things You Didn't Know About Die Hard

11. Alan Rickman Flinched Whenever He Had To Fire A Gun

By all accounts Alan Rickman was the total opposite of the terrorist he played in Die Hard, to the extent that Bonnie Bedelia, who played John's estranged wife Holly in the film, recently revealed that she had lunch with the actor every day while shooting the film.

Rickman also wasn't in any way experienced with handling firearms when he won the Hans Gruber role, and because McTiernan isn't a stickler for "realism" like Michael Mann, he didn't make Rickman undertake weapons training of any kind.

As a result, Rickman would routinely flinch whenever a scene required him to fire a gun, which obviously isn't a particularly believable quality in a cold-blooded terrorist such as himself.

This forced McTiernan to edit around Rickman wherever possible and cut away from his face when firing a gun.

However, in the scene where Gruber murders Nakatomi executive Mr. Takagi (James Shigeta), for a few fractions of a second you can see Rickman wince at the sound of the gunshot.