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Tag Archives: Alan Rickman


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Birth of Fiona Shaw, Actress & Director

fiona-shaw

Fiona Mary Shaw, accomplished classical actress and theatre and opera director, is born in Farranree, County Cork on July 10, 1958. She is best known for her role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films and her role portraying Marnie Stonebrook in the HBO series True Blood.

Shaw attends secondary school at Scoil Mhuire in Cork. She receives her degree at University College Cork. She trains at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and is part of a ‘new wave’ of actors to emerge from the Academy. She receives much acclaim as Julia in the Royal National Theatre production of Richard Sheridan‘s The Rivals (1983).

Shaw’s theatrical roles include Celia in As You Like It (1984), Madame de Volanges in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1985), Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (1987), Lady Franjul in The New Inn (1987), Young Woman in Machinal (1993), for which she wins the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, Winnie in Happy Days (2007), and the title roles in Electra (1988), The Good Person of Sechuan (1989), Hedda Gabler (1991), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1998) and Medea (2000). She performs T. S. Eliot‘s poem The Waste Land as a one-person show at the Liberty Theatre in New York City to great acclaim in 1996, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for her performance.

Shaw plays Miss Morrison in the 1984 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode “The Adventure of the Crooked Man” and Catherine Greenshaw in Agatha Christie’s Marple episode “Greenshaw’s Folly” in 2013.

Shaw notably plays the male lead in Richard II, directed by Deborah Warner in 1995. She has collaborated with Warner on a number of occasions, on both stage and screen. She has also worked in film and television, including My Left Foot (1989), Mountains of the Moon (1990), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Undercover Blues (1993), Persuasion (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), The Avengers (1998), Gormenghast (2000), and five of the Harry Potter films in which she plays Harry Potter‘s aunt Petunia Dursley. She has a brief but key role in Brian DePalma‘s The Black Dahlia (2006).

In 2009, Shaw collaborates with Deborah Warner again, taking the lead role in Tony Kushner‘s translation of Bertolt Brecht‘s Mother Courage and Her Children. In a 2002 article for The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen describes their professional relationship as “surely one of the most richly creative partnerships in theatrical history.” Other collaborations between the two women include productions of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechuan and Henrik Ibsen‘s Hedda Gabler, the latter adapted for television.

Shaw appears in The Waste Land at Wilton’s Music Hall in January 2010 and in a Royal National Theatre revival of London Assurance in March 2010. In November 2010, she stars in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan. The play is also staged in New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2011.

Shaw appears in season four of American TV show True Blood. Her character, Marnie Stonebrook, has been described as an underachieving palm reader who is spiritually possessed by an actual witch. Her character leads a coven of necromancer witches who threaten the status quo in Bon Temps, erasing most of Eric Northman‘s memories and leaving him almost helpless when he tries to kill her and break up their coven.

In 2012, Shaw appears in the Royal National Theatre revival of Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker.

The world’s largest solo theatre festival, United Solo Theatre Festival, recognizes her performance in The Testament of Mary on Broadway with the 2013 United Solo Special Award.

In 2018 Shaw begins portraying Carolyn Martens, head of the MI6 Russian Desk, in BBC America‘s Killing Eve, for which she wins the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Television Series. Later the same year, she plays a senior MI6 officer in Mrs. Wilson.


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Death of Alan Rickman, Actor & Director

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Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman, English actor and director, dies in London on January 14, 2016.

Rickman is born into a working-class family of Irish and Welsh descent in Hammersmith, London, on February 21, 1946. Rickman attends Derwentwater Primary School in Acton, and then Latymer Upper School in London through the Direct Grant system, where he becomes involved in drama. After leaving Latymer, he attends Chelsea College of Art and Design and then the Royal College of Art. After graduation, Rickman and several friends open a graphic design studio called Graphiti, but after three years of successful business, he decides that he is going to pursue acting professionally. He writes to request an audition with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), which he attends from 1972 until 1974.

Upon leaving the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Rickman becomes a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in modern and classical theatre productions. His first big television role comes in 1982, but his big break is as the Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, for which he is nominated for a Tony Award.

Rickman’s first film role is as the German terrorist leader Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988). His other film roles include the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), for which he receives the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Elliott Marston in Quigley Down Under (1990), Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), P.L. O’Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1995), Éamon de Valera in Neil Jordan‘s Michael Collins (1996), Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest (1999), Harry in Love Actually (2003) and Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim‘s musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). He gains further notice for his film performances as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. He also stars in television films, playing the title character in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996), which wins him a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and Dr. Alfred Blalock in the Emmy-winning Something the Lord Made (2004). His final film roles are as Lieutenant General Frank Benson in the thriller Eye in the Sky (2015), and the voice of Absolem, the caterpillar in Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016).

In August 2015, Rickman suffers a minor stroke, which leads to the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He reveals the fact that he has terminal cancer to only his closest confidants. He dies of pancreatic cancer on January 14, 2016, at the age of 69. His remains are cremated on February 3, 2016, in the West London Crematorium in Kensal Green. His ashes are given to his wife, Rima Horton. His final two films, Eye in the Sky and Alice Through the Looking Glass, are dedicated to his memory.