Alan Rickman dead

[Grzrd]

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/alan-rickman-daniel-radcliffe-pens-touching-essay-actors/story?id=36286811

He is now reunited with the thread.

[english si]

Old news! I could have watched his entire back catalogue aired in tribute by now! (oddly Love Actually didn't get reaired, probably as it was aired to death over Christmas, but so was Die Hard and the Harry Potter octology that did get reaired this past week)

Die Hard was his first film, but he played such a perfect villain so perfectly that Hans Gruber is the archetype. It also started the trend of British actors as villains in Blockbusters.

[Pete from Boston]

It also started the trend of British actors as villains in Blockbusters.

Peter Cushing would respectfully (contemptfully?) disagree.

I loved him in Bob Roberts and as the humiliated classical-British-actor-turned-sci-fi-caricature in Galaxy Quest.

[triplemultiplex]

The internet always has the perfect image for any event.

[Brandon]

The internet always has the perfect image for any event.

"It's like throwing gasoline on a flame."

[Pete from Boston]

Was it that inflammatory?  Heck, Christopher Lee made a career out of being a British-actor villain before there really were "blockbusters," as did Peter Cushing, but Star Wars's depiction of the Imperial officers as mostly British was pretty obvious.  (Darth Vader, to be fair, used more of the old-time movie-star "transatlantic") accent.

[Brandon]

Was it that inflammatory?  Heck, Christopher Lee made a career out of being a British-actor villain before there really were "blockbusters," as did Peter Cushing, but Star Wars's depiction of the Imperial officers as mostly British was pretty obvious.  (Darth Vader, to be fair, used more of the old-time movie-star "transatlantic") accent.

Huh?  Mine was a quote by Rickman's character in Galaxy Quest.

[english si]

Lee and Cushing made great careers as villains, but they didn't make people of their nationality go to as villains. Some films like Star Wars cast Brits as villains (though how much of that was simply as it was mostly filmed in London?), but far from the 'nearly every big money film with a villain role' it has been since the beginning of the 90s.

Rickman in Die Hard brought in an era when British actors were the villains in practically every film that had them. It got so bad that growing up there were "can a Brit ever be a good guy in Hollywood" and "why are we always the villain?" articles in the 90s, 00s and 10s. In the end, we Brits just gave up and celebrated the casual racism that Hollywood was projecting