British actor Alan Rickman, a veteran of dozens of films, has died at age 69. Recently, Rickman was most well-known for portraying the complicated villain Severus Snape in the films based on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
“Rickman had been suffering from cancer,” The Guardian reports.
Rickman appeared in many blockbuster films during his prolific career, from 1988’s Die Hard with Bruce Willis to 2003’s Love Actually and the Harry Potter films.
Blessed with a rich and deep voice, the actor brought intelligence and humanity to a wide spectrum of roles, judiciously deploying what seemed to be a bottomless supply of frowns and smirks that endeared him to his fans.
While his voice became something of a trademark, Rickman once said that he endured much criticism for it in drama school. One voice teacher, as he recalled in 2007, told Rickman that he sounded as if his voice was “coming out of the back end of a drain pipe.”