It’s a demanding role, without too much screen time to put a complex character across. He comes off as a weak man on screen, one with motives that aren’t always clear. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many questioned the historical accuracy of the story that Jordan put on the screen, but there’s little doubting that Rickman puts across a three dimensional character, however true to the real man it happened to be. Liam Neeson would, with some justification, get the lion’s share of the acting plaudits where Michael Collins is concerned. But Rickman deserves his fair share of applause. The film simply wouldn’t work as well without him.

3. Die Hard

“Bill Clay.” You know the moment. The bit where John McClane happens upon Hans Gruber, not necessarily knowing that it’s his nemesis that he’s in front of. The unarmed Gruber’s way out is to suddenly play frightened, a man in need of saving by Roy Rogers. And his immediate transformation is the clear and present benefit of getting a brilliant actor to play a movie villain. Because straight away, you fear for McClane, so cunning and brilliant is his opponent. You buy, if you haven’t already, that Gruber is an intensely clever man, and you vow to watch a few more Alan Rickman films, wondering if he might in some way be related to Jeremy Irons.

The ghost of Hans Gruber has hovered over the Die Hard films ever since, with John McClane coming up against, Irons aside, a series of decreasingly impressive foes in his bid to save the airport/city/country/world/planet. Because Rickman is such a strong foe too, it allows Die Hard space to be the thriller it is, rather than the flat out action movie it could have been. The battle of wills is brilliant, and that’s even before we’ve got to the wonderful meeting between him and Ellis.

Rickman would take on one more high-profile outright villain role before deliberately moving away from them (and if you’re looking for another, check out his fine work in Quigley Down Under). Which neatly leads us on to…

2. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

With genuinely no disrespect meant to the many talented people involved in the Kevin Costner-headlined 1991 blockbuster, had Alan Rickman not been cast as the Sheriff of Nottingham, there’s not much chance we’d still be talking about the film some 20 years on. As it stands, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a brilliantly entertaining, overlong muddle, and a show that Rickman doesn’t just steal, he practically invents the word ‘pwned’ as he goes along. It’s the reason why his Sheriff rated just higher than the mighty Hans Gruber in this list. Gruber is arguably the better acting performance, but Nottingham is comfortably one of the most entertaining villains we’ve ever seen in a blockbuster movie.