Alan Rickman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

5 Awesome Performances...

5. Snape - Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2

What a rollercoaster ride the Harry Potter movies proved to be. When Rickman was first cast as Professor Snape in 2001, it was easy to assume he'd yet again been typecast as a villain. JK Rowling was still only four books into the series at the time, and as such there was a lot we had left to learn about the sour-faced ex-Death Eater.

Rickman himself famously contested the charge that he constantly played villains, preferring to consider them 'unsympathetic characters' with greater complexities than your standard, clear cut good guy/bad guy material. This is most emphatically the case with Snape - and it's in Deathly Hallows Part 2 that the character's true face is finally revealed.

While he may never have been what anyone would call a nice guy, it packs a real emotional punch to finally learn what has been motivating Snape the entire time, and the unthinkable decisions he forced himself to make in the name of the greater good. These scenes might easily have veered toward sentimentality, but in the very capable hands of Rickman and director David Yates, things never get too gooey.