Alan Rickman on Why Harry Potter is So Successful

The Hudson Union Society™ www.hudsonunionsociety.com is where todays leaders come to discuss tomorrows ideas. If you live not to far from New York, please join us in person. A suave, urbane screen villain in the grand tradition, Alan Rickman has created a handful of delightful characters since his screen debut in the 1988 actioner Die Hard to Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. Rickman made his film debut as a vicious German terrorist in Die Hard (1988) In 1991, Rickman stole the hugely budgeted Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from star Kevin Costner, delightfully tearing into the scenery as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. In 1995 he was Colonel Brandon, Kate Winslet's dark, smoldering suitor, in the Emma Thompson-scripted, Ang Lee-directed Sense and Sensibility. He co-starred as Eamon De Valera in Neil Jordan's biopic Michael Collins (1996). Rickman played Metaron, an angel who appears inside a pillar of fire only to be doused with a fire extinguisher in Dogma (1999), writer-director Kevin Smith's comedic pillorying of religious doctrine, and he reached tremendous comic heights in the Star Trek-skewering comedy Galaxy Quest (1999) as the bitter, Leonard Nimoy-esque actor Alexander Dane, a serious Shakespearean thespian who resents being typecast in his cheesy sci-fi TV show role as Dr. Lazarus. Rickman next tackled a part which, would make him an icon in the minds of a generation of book lovers and moviegoers when he appeared as the skulking, seemingly malevolent Professor Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), a scene-stealing role he would repeat in the film's sequels in 2002 and 2004. He also had a turn in the large ensemble of writer-director Richard Curtis' multi-story comedy Love Actually (2003) as a man contemplating being unfaithful to his wife (Emma Thompson). Rickman generated plenty of laughs when he voiced Marvin, the manic depressive robot with a brain the size of a planet who's been relegated to menial tasks by his far less intelligent human masters in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), the eagerly awaited film version of Douglas Adams' popular masterworks of comedy and science fiction.
Rickman again revived his role as the mysterious Professor Snape for the series' fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), the first to be helmed by a British director (Mike Newell). Rickman is an accomplished stage actor and director and has impressed audiences on Broadway and the West End of London.

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