Alan Rickman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Marvin - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Another instance of a movie which cast Alan Rickman in a supporting role, and didn't wind up being anywhere near as good as it should have. Douglas Adams' much-loved sci-fi satire had been realised brilliantly on radio, television and in novels, and a movie version had been long overdue, but faced with such a legacy to live up to, director Garth Jennings' film struggled to find its own identity.

Rickman's voiceover work as Marvin the Paranoid Android is a symptom of this overall problem, rather than a cause. While it's not hard to see why he would be deemed a good fit for the perpetually depressed artificial intelligence, he ultimately doesn't do much beyond delivering the lines in a standard Alan Rickman voice, and this doesn't prove enough to make the character as truly funny as it had the potential to be.

This is by no means the only disappointing movie to which Rickman lent his pipes either: he also voiced the Blue Caterpillar in Tim Burton's bloated live-action Alice in Wonderland (a role reprised in the upcoming Alice Through The Looking Glass), and even featured in the supremely substandard 2000 animation Help! I'm A Fish, AKA A Fish Tale.