I am a total Harry Potter fan. I didn't 'read' the books but rather, as they each came along I bought them on CD. The audiobook series was read by Jim Dale, an amazing British voice actor. There were about 40 different voices in Book 1 and 134 different voices in Book 5 -- and he performed all of them. Between Jim's rich voice and J K Rowling's prose, the Harry Potter stories came alive for me and I fell in love. Every time a new book was due, I re-listened to the previous ones "in preparation". And even now, with the series long over, I still periodically work my way through all of the books during hours of commuting.
Books will forever be better than their movies, but I didn't miss a Harry Potter movie either. I have seen them all many times. In the movies, I fell in love with Severus Snape, played by Alan Rickman. Rickman was always one of my favorite actors, but I thought he was brilliant in the Harry Potter movies. He was so perfectly cast for the role of Snape -- a complicated character with many layers. Even in Movie 1, when the remaining four books that revealed Snape's capacity to love had yet to be written, he played the role of Snape in a way that you couldn't quite see him as completely evil; you never quite bought into the sneer or the bad way he treated Harry. A very nuanced, brilliant performance. Described and portrayed with 'stringy hair, a hooknose and sallow skin', I nonetheless found something very sexy about Snape -- or was it because it was Alan Rickman? Hhmmm. I've always liked the dark, brooding type with good at their core.
The passing of celebrities is not often something that moves me, but I am very sorry to see Rickman go. He was a great actor and from all reports, quite a great person.
Books will forever be better than their movies, but I didn't miss a Harry Potter movie either. I have seen them all many times. In the movies, I fell in love with Severus Snape, played by Alan Rickman. Rickman was always one of my favorite actors, but I thought he was brilliant in the Harry Potter movies. He was so perfectly cast for the role of Snape -- a complicated character with many layers. Even in Movie 1, when the remaining four books that revealed Snape's capacity to love had yet to be written, he played the role of Snape in a way that you couldn't quite see him as completely evil; you never quite bought into the sneer or the bad way he treated Harry. A very nuanced, brilliant performance. Described and portrayed with 'stringy hair, a hooknose and sallow skin', I nonetheless found something very sexy about Snape -- or was it because it was Alan Rickman? Hhmmm. I've always liked the dark, brooding type with good at their core.
The passing of celebrities is not often something that moves me, but I am very sorry to see Rickman go. He was a great actor and from all reports, quite a great person.