Alan Rickman's Notes About Die Hard's Script Lead To Some Key Changes
The 1988 action film "Die Hard" is the movie that turned the late Alan Rickman into a household name. He played Hans Gruber, a criminal mastermind who holds an office building hostage during a company Christmas party. Gruber has a scheme to steal $600 million, and he has no qualms about killing people to get it. There's a lot of reasons the movie works so well, but the back-and-forth between Gruber and John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a core part of what makes it a beloved classic.
Although Rickman was not well-known at the time of filming, and this was his first ever major role in an action movie, that didn't stop him from giving his thoughts to the writers and directors. In a 2015 interview, Rickman recalled making a suggestion to producer Joel Silver, saying it would be far more interesting for Gruber to be wearing a suit in the scene where he's pretending to be a hostage, not the full terrorist gear the character was wearing in the script.
"I got Joel saying, 'Get the hell out of here, you'll wear what you're told,'" Rickman explained. "But when I came back, I was handed a new script."
Insisting on doing the stunt himself
"It showed that it pays to have a little bit of theatre training," Rickman said of his experience making "Die Hard." He first got into acting at 26, and then mostly stuck to theater until his early 40s. The fact that he didn't get his first movie role until he began middle age is a little unusual for a renowned actor, but Rickman credits those early years for his later success on the big screen.
"I like feeling a bit unsafe, and theatre, of course, is deadly," Rickman said. "The good thing about starting late in this career is you go, 'Well, what's the worst that could happen?'" It was this attitude that led to him wanting to do the final stunt of "Die Hard," the scene where his character fell from the top floor of Nakotomi Tower, by himself. Rickman once recalled the surprise of the producers when he offered to do the stunt himself, which involved him being dropped onto an air bag about 25 feet below. "They were very careful to make it my very last shot on the film," Rickman said.
Rickman doing the stunt himself helped make the scene so memorable, in part because of how believably Rickman portrays a man who suddenly finds himself falling to his death. Some of this is due to the film's stunt coordinator, Charlie Picerni, who misled the actor about when he'd be dropped. Rickman was told he'd be dropped on the count of three, but as Picerni told The Hollywood Reporter, "I told the stunt guys, let him go on one." As a result, the look on Gruber's face is one of a man genuinely startled. Was this an ethical way of approaching the scene? No, but we can't argue with the final product.
Almost not in the movie at all
One of the things that makes Rickman's movie career so fascinating is how easily most of it might never have happened at all. When he first read the script for "Die Hard," his first instinct was to turn it down. "I read it and said, 'What the hell is this? I'm not doing an action movie,'" Rickman recalled. Luckily, his friends talked him into it.
Rickman's later role as Severus Snape in the "Harry Potter" movies, arguably an even more iconic character than Gruber, was also one that Rickman had mixed feelings about. In the excerpts of Rickman's soon-to-be-published diary, Rickman wrote about how he kept trying to leave the role. Although he had nothing but nice things to say about Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the third movie, he was critical of the young child stars' acting, many of the other directors, and even John Williams' score, which Rickman described as "hideous."
The thing that kept Rickman around for all eight movies was when J.K. Rowling told him about the big reveal of Snape's backstory. "She gave me one piece of information I promised to never share," Rickman once explained. "It made me know I had to drive down two roads at the same time." Sure enough, Rickman's portrayal of Snape during that pivotal reveal in "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" was a highlight of the entire series, and one of Rickman's most beloved performances. Rickman may not have always wanted to be trapped in an eight-movie commitment but, perhaps a little selfishly, we're happy he stuck to it.