The hits just keep coming this week as the latest celebrity death is Alan Rickman who is best known for portraying Hans Gruber, the Euro terrorist in Die Hard. His family confirmed that Rickman passed away on Thursday at the age of 69. He had been suffering from cancer.

Rickman achieved global success as a film actor relatively late in life, following his memorable turn as terrorist Hans Gruber in 1988’s Die Hard opposite Bruce Willis.

He was also known to millions of fans as the delectably nasty Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. The decade he spent working on the blockbuster Harry Potter adaptations as the mysterious Severus Snape further endeared him to an entirely new, and global, audience of fans. “To be perfectly honest, having a film career is a bit of a surprise,” said the RADA alumni last April at his on-stage talk on receiving his BAFTA Fellowship.

Other notable film appearances include Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Galaxy Quest, Truly Madly Deeply, and many more.

Rickman also became a noted director of such films as The Winter Guest, A Little Chaos and others.

Theater was a great love of his as he starred as Mark Antony opposite Helen Mirren’s Cleopatra and on both the West End and Broadway in 2002 for Noel Coward’s Private Lives with Lindsay Duncan and director Howard Davies. His three memorable performances on Broadway ended most recently in 2012 with his starring role in Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar, in which he played a lecherous self-important writer past his prime giving lessons to high-paying young students.

All of us at Horror Society would like to offer our condolences to Alan Rickman’s family and friends in this difficult time. Alan Rickman gave us some truly memorable roles and he stood out in anything he appeared in. You are gone but will never be forgotten. Go swiftly kind sir.