Alan Rickman had a moustache in the movie Truly Madly Deeply… and it turned out to be a great film anyway! Because Alan Rickman’s talent transcends moustaches.
In the film he plays the lover of Juliet Stevenson (seen here), who dies (Alan Rickman dies, I mean) but returns as a ghost (also Rickman) to Stevenson’s relief and glee. But then things turn sour because Rickman is kind of a jerk as a ghost. Also, he still has that moustache.
Rickman does look quite convincing as a professional cellist, though. The rumpled clothes and hair are just right.
There’s something soulful about him that fit the bill for this role. However…
…that wasn’t Alan Rickman’s only famous role with facial hair. He won an Emmy as Russian anti-hero Rasputin in the 1996 TV movie of the same name. That’s him as the mad monk above, caressing the great Greta Scacchi with nefarious intent.
And let us not forget the great Hans Gruber, his evil skyscraper-hijacking German in Die Hard. This was his first film role! (Until then he’d been a star on the British stage but was mostly unknown to the rest of the world.) Die Hard launched Bruce Willis‘s career as a heroic loner, but it also launched Alan Rickman’s early career as a bearded super-villain.
In recent years, Alan Rickman was moustache-free and also far less villainous. Here he was last April in Berlin, signing autographs for fans before the premiere of his film Die Gaertnerin von Versailles.
“Less villainous” also seems closer to his true self. Many of his obituaries remark on his sense of humor. Fellow Harry Potter actor Michael Gambon, for instance, told the BBC that “Everybody loved Alan. He was always happy and fun and creative and very, very funny.”
With or without moustache.