Alan Rickman has revealed he almost turned down Die Hard – because he didn’t want to make an action movie.

The 69-year-old actor and director opened up about the Hollywood blockbuster, which made him the go-to guy for villainous roles – as he looked back at his career at a special evening celebrating his Life In Pictures at Bafta in London.

Alan Rickman talking to Boyd Hilton at Bafta (Jamie Simonds/Bafta)
Alan Rickman talking to Boyd Hilton at Bafta (Jamie Simonds/Bafta)

Alan – who is known all over the world for playing criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in the hit 1988 action film – also recalled how he came up with the idea for one of the key plot twists.

The Harry Potter star revealed he was offered the role following his success on Broadway in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Alan explained: “We’d finished six months in New York and so I went to LA and did the round of meetings. And I didn’t know how any of this happened; you know I didn’t know about LA, I didn’t really know anything about the film business.

“I went to meet some casting directors, I went to meet some producers, and I think it was two days after I got there I was offered Die Hard. And I’d never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap.

“I read it and I said, ‘What the hell is this? I’m not doing an action movie.’ And agents and people said, ‘Alan, you don’t understand, this doesn’t happen, you’ve only been in LA two days and you’ve been asked to do this film’.”

The Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves star revealed he hadn’t been happy with the unstylish costume he was given to wear, so he made a suggestion to producer Joel Silver, which changed the plot of the film.

He said: “I was being fitted for all of this terrorist gear in the early days of putting the film together.

“And I said, ‘Why would I be wearing this when I’ve got all these huge hulks who are gonna do all the dirty work? So I was just thinking you know, if I was wearing a suit and not all of this terrorist gear, then maybe there could be a scene where I put on an American accent and he thinks I’m one of the hostages.’

Alan Rickman (Jamie Simonds/Bafta)
Alan Rickman (Jamie Simonds/Bafta)

“And I left this note on Joel Silver’s table and I went back to England. And then I came back and they handed me the new script. So you know it just pays to occasionally use a little bit of theatre training when you’re doing a movie.”

Alan also revealed that he refused a stunt double, and agreed to plummet off the top of a skyscraper for real, as his character falls to his death at the end of the movie.

He revealed: “This is before the days of CGI, now anybody would do it because you know, you’d just be falling nowhere and then they’d blow your clothes in a computer. That had to be done for real.

Alan Rickman (Grant Pollard/Invision)
Alan Rickman (Grant Pollard/Invision)

“I had to pull my own cord to release me. I had to remember to bring the gun up and get it in the frame. And then he said, ‘As you’re going down, make sure you spread your arms into a kind of star shape, because if you don’t you’ll start turning and you’ll land on your head and kill yourself.’

“So it was sort of challenging, and we did it three times at three o’clock in the morning and it was the very last shot of mine in the film. Just in case.”