5. Hans Gruber's Death - Die Hard
Though to many Alan Rickman will forever be thought of as Snape in the Harry Potter series, to me he's always going to be Hans Gruber, the immaculate, slick villain he played in Die Hard. Brilliant though Rickman's performance was, it's his epic, excessive death scene that's perhaps most memorable of all, as he falls to his grisly demise from the Nakatomi Tower. Though Rickman was good enough to do the scene himself without a double (allowing for the convincing shot we see in the final movie), director John McTiernan didn't think that this was good enough, and so added an element of surprise into the mix... McTiernan told Rickman that he would be dropped onto a safety net 40 feet below on a count of three, but instead dropped him on a count of two, hence the shocked expression you can see above is completely genuine, as Rickman presumably suspected that the rigging equipment had failed and he was therefore toast.