Alan Rickman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

1. Hans Gruber - Die Hard

Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, the key role that made Rickman a movie legend was his first ever feature film. But while he may have been a novice on a Hollywood film set, few of us could have any doubts that he knew exactly what he was doing.

28 years on, Die Hard remains one of the greatest action movies ever made, for many good reasons: the simplicity of the set-up, the heightened tension of the one night setting, and the humanity and vulnerability of Bruce Willis' John McClane. But if you're going by the maxim that an action movie is only ever as good as its villain, there's no truer example of that than Rickman's Hans Gruber.

The softly spoken, well-dressed, cultured and intelligent terrorist-turned-large scale thief is a magnificent nemesis for Willis' all-American blue collar hero, and Rickman's relish in bringing him to life positively oozes off the screen. Much as the movie provided a blueprint for most of the action cinema to follow in the 1990s, Rickman's performance set a benchmark for big screen bad guys which few have even come close to meeting since.

Read on for Rickman's 5 that sucked...