ways_back_room | This week is fucking fired!!!

Current Mood: melancholy

This week is fucking fired!!!

After David Bowie, the next British giant to die of cancer at the age of 69 is Alan Rickman!

In 2002, the Nazgul and I went to London especially to see him on stage in 'Private Lives' and in the RADA gala, und did the whole stage door thing, meeting him briefly and telling him how much we liked him. The autograph I got (classically on his page of the theatre programme brochure) is still on my wall.

I even managed to make him laugh.-

My first proper Milli!charrie, even before 'Suti, was Rasputin -- and while I played him from history and my own research, I had Alan Rickman on the icons, from the movie in which James Frain plays Felix Yusupov...

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....no. I refuse to accept this.

So do I. David Bowie's death was unexpected shock, out of left field -- but this brings me to angry denial!

Wish I had seen him on stage, as his film roles, while so often memorable, were also so often way over the top. He tended to land in parts that didn't use him to his best. (I always felt he - like most adults - was underutilized in the Harry Potter films.)

But he will forever be Sir Alexander Dane aka Dr. Lazarus from "Galaxy Quest." It was a role meant for an actor's actor, hammy and arch and strangely full of heart all at once. He will be missed, and he will be remembered.

(Yeah, I know everyone else will invoke Die Hard. I never cared for that one much, Rickman notwithstanding.)

Edited 2016-01-14 14:10 (UTC)

I'm not apt to invoke 'Die Hard', either -- I saw that once, I think, and didn't like it much. But 'Galaxy Quest' is definitely an all-time classic for me, including the way Rickman's character finally comes to accept his extraterrestrial fanboy, and with him the concept of fandom he had been struggling with. Now, he can compare notes with Nimoy in the afterlife...