![]() ![]() In essence, Turpin is the catalyst for the lies and murders that befall London's Fleet Street, and as such he can't be seen by the audience as someone that could become good. Extreme? Maybe, but Turpin did rape his wife, drove her to commit suicide, and is preparing to marry Barker's daughter. But take Rickman as Judge Turpin in 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the nasty that gets Johnny Depp's barber Benjamin Barker exiled, eventually leading to Barker becoming the murderous Sweeney Todd. There are some actors, say Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose natural charisma prevails over every character they play, so it isn't a trait that's necessarily easy to master. There is a charisma that shines through, which leads to another element that Rickman brought to the game: his ability to turn it off. Twistedly so, but still somewhat likable. ![]() Yet even with all of this, his villains are likable. Rowling gave Rickman just a hint of the endgame for Snape early on in filming the series, making the performance just that much more layered and impressive. The real magic, if you will, of that performance is how it then changes one's perception of the character's actions in the preceding films. All of it done without speaking a single word. Yet as he lay dying in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, everything in his face says so much: the pain of lost love, the heartache, his torn attachment to Harry. His stone face belies little, leading the viewer to believe him to be villainous, to believe his loyalities lie with Lord Voldemort ( Ralph Fiennes). Throughout the series, his line delivery is dripping with contempt and deliberateness, with Snape's "Hello, Potter" still able to send chills down one's spine. Perhaps the best example of this is in the Harry Potter films. At the other end of the scale, Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham from 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves allowed for scene-chewing and outlandish behavior, and in the screen time given he runs with it, fills that space to make what could have been a throwaway role into something more, gifting us with "Locksley, I'll cut your heart out with a spoon" (because it's dull and will hurt more, of course).Īnother of Rickman’s strengths was his balance of verbal and non-verbal cues to deepen the character. ![]() In the Harry Potter series of films, It would have been incredibly easy for him to chew up the scenery as Severus Snape, making him larger than life, but that would have been completely inappropriate for the role and, more importantly, would overstep the boundaries of his supporting role. Spock).Ī tricky talent that he expertly managed was his ability to fill the space with what was given to his character, in both screen time and emotion. Lazarus in a juvenile, silly piece of sci-fi nonsense, doomed to relive the role at fan conventions for time eternal (somewhat unrelated, it's also a brilliant send-up of Leonard Nimoy's love/hate relationship with his role as Dr. Although his Sir Alexander Dane wasn’t a villain in that film, his actions, his line delivery, and his resignation made it clear just how much he believed that he should be remembered and acknowledged for far more than having played the alien Dr. Rickman would satirize that arrogance to a degree in Galaxy Quest. ![]()
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