The iconic role Alan Rickman originally rejected: “What the hell is this?”
From day one, Alan Rickman was always looking for quality over quantity in his roles. While every actor has to take on a handful of jobs they need for a decent paycheck, Rickman could turn any one-dimensional role on the page into a spellbinding character onscreen, even making his secondary roles in movies like Love Actually feel lived-in. Although he may have had a few legacy characters under his belt in the 2000s, one of his first breakout efforts was his worst nightmare.
Coming from the world of theatre, Rickman saw his time onscreen as an art, looking to carry a certain sense of drama in every move he made. Although that may have served him well when taking on the more operatic roles of his career, he felt that his acting style wasn’t being taken seriously when working on the movie Die Hard.
Telling the story of Bruce Willis’ John McClane as he single-handedly takes down a militia of terrorists at a Christmas party, Rickman’s role as the villainous Hans Gruber would become iconic, from his stoic delivery to the playful rapport he has with McClane throughout the movie. Although it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role outside of Rickman, the actor initially thought the script was terrible.
When looking at his character, Rickman was appalled by the idea of doing an action movie, only to be reminded of how he needed to pay the bills, telling Express, “What the hell is this? I’m not doing an action movie! I didn’t know anything about LA. I didn’t know anything about the film business … I’d never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap”.
Although Rickman begrudgingly took on the role at first, he knew that he wanted to make some changes to the script to suit his style. Recommending a complete facelift to the story, Rickman showed up on set with different ideas for how to play Gruber to humanise him, only to be met with spite from producer Joel Silver.
Not wanting to change anything, Rickman remembers Silver tearing into him for changing the story before eventually coming around to his way of thinking, explaining: “I got Joel saying: ‘Get the hell out of here, you’ll wear what you’re told!’ When I came back, I was handed a new script. It showed that it pays to have a little bit of theatre training”.
While it may have been bold of Rickman to attempt a rewrite of the script he had been given, his additions would become pivotal to shaping Gruber as a character. As opposed to the traditional attire of his henchmen, Rickman suggested that Gruber be wearing a suit, setting him apart from the rest of his crew as someone of importance.
Wearing a suit also allowed him to blend in during the original heist, looking like his fellow partygoers before holding up the entire building. While it may have been an effort to get more screen time, Rickman also suggested having a scene where McClane and Gruber meet face-to-face before the film’s end. While Gruber may let most of his henchmen do his dirty work throughout the film, this one added scene showcases his ability to work under pressure the same way his employees do.
That’s not to say Rickman didn’t get his fair share of comeuppance, either, with the final shot of Gruber falling to his death being filmed without warning, capturing the actor’s natural reaction as he was falling. While most would be called a diva for wanting all the changes that Rickman added in, every subtle tweak helped him inhabit his role as one of the most iconic villains in action movie history.
