Everyone keeps on about how Hans Gruber was his first film role, and that’s certainly true, but it’s not as though he’d never acted before. He was well established in British theatre, to the point that the lament about how he’d played Richard III might as well have been his own, given how people seemed more interested in remembering him as being in an action movie.

In what is another of his most notable roles, he was arguably miscast. He was classy, dignified, and strangely handsome, yet book-Snape is unpleasant and greasy. It was hard to feel the level of disgust for movie-Snape that you were supposed to, because he was Alan Rickman. And then, when he was called on to show the level of emotion that he did in the final film, I actually thought he deserved an Oscar nomination.

But he never got one. Not for Snape. Not for Colonel Brandon is Sense and Sensibility, not for Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply. I suspect this is because most of his famous work was for genre films, and the Academy is less likely to recognize genre films. And, I think, villains, and that is what most of us will remember him as. Snape. Gruber. The Sheriff of Nottingham.

I can’t remember the story word for word, alas, but apparently, he was irritated by the notion. His friends didn’t bring it up, but a child once did. His response was that he did not play villains; he played interesting characters. Dr. Lazarus. The Metatron. Marvin the Paranoid Android.

And when I told that story, badly, you heard his voice, right? You could see the look on his face when he said “interesting characters.” I haven’t even see Die Hard, and there’s at least half a dozen films that I can quote. He even had a decent singing voice! There are roles I wish I could have seen him in—a wide array and probably more if I stopped longer to think about it. And, no, they’re not all villains, but they are interesting characters. That is how Alan Rickman will be remembered.