Alan Rickman

What do you remember about an actor once he’s gone? The distinctive, mysterious essence of Alan Rickman, who died Jan. 14 at 69, is that voice, a silky tiger’s purr. Rickman was already in his early 40s when he took his first film role, that of the urbane villain Hans Gruber in 1988’s Die Hard. In a profession where so many people rush to be stars, he’d taken his time–he found the sweet spot between leading man and character actor, and it suited him. Rickman was extraordinary in Anthony Minghella’s 1991 Truly, Madly, Deeply, as a cellist-ghost who returns to comfort his bereaved girlfriend, and in Dean Parisot’s 1999 space odyssey, Galaxy Quest, playing a very serious actor relegated to a Spock-like alien role on a cult-hit TV show. (“I was an actor once!” he says with a marvelous eye roll.)

In real life, though, Rickman expressed nothing but fondness for the role that made him really famous, as the seemingly misanthropic, though ultimately heroic, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter pictures. The sound of Snape’s voice, resonant and beguiling, is a kind of magic charm by itself. It may be the thing you remember. But it’s inseparable from the whole spectacular package.

–STEPHANIE ZACHAREK