On-screen Prof Snape loses battle to cancer

London: Renowned British actor Alan Rickman, best known for playing Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series and ruthless terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard, died here Thursday, media reports said. He was 69. Rickman’s family, which confirmed the death, said he had been suffering from cancer, reported the Guardian. Born February 21, 1946 in a working class family, Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman shot to fame as the German terrorist in the high octane-action thriller Die Hard (1988) opposite Bruce Willis, and most notably as the apparently malevolent Prof Snape, the potions master of Hogwarts, ceaselessly targeting the boy wizard in all seven films of the series from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II (2011). agencies