Alan Rickman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Sheriff Of Nottingham - Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves

By all rights, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is not a film people should still be talking about 25 years later. It's a trashy, overblown Hollywood take on a classic tale with a bland central performance from a painfully miscast Kevin Costner, and almost everyone involved seems to be taking it all far too seriously.

Note that I said almost everyone. Happily, the one key figure treating the whole endeavour with the respect it deserves - i.e. none - is Alan Rickman. His gloriously cartoonish performance as chief villain the Sheriff of Nottingham is quite rightly held up as one of his best, and it saves the movie completely.

Famously, Rickman turned down the role several times, before accepting on the condition that he have carte blanche to reinterpret the character and change his dialogue as he saw fit. This he did, reportedly rewriting chunks of the script over pizza with his friends Ruby Wax and Peter Barnes; and it's that meal we have to thank for so many of the Sheriff's unforgettable barbed-tongue witticisms. ("Call off Christmas!" "I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!" And so on.)