The Hudson Union Society™ www.hudsonunionsociety.com is where todays leaders come to discuss tomorrows ideas. If you live not to far from New York, please join us in person. A suave, urbane screen villain in the grand tradition, Alan Rickman has created a handful of delightful characters since his screen debut in the 1988 actioner Die Hard to Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. Rickman made his film debut as a vicious German terrorist in Die Hard (1988) In 1991, Rickman stole the hugely budgeted Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from star Kevin Costner, delightfully tearing into the scenery as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. In 1995 he was Colonel Brandon, Kate Winslet’s dark, smoldering suitor, in the Emma Thompson-scripted, Ang Lee-directed Sense and Sensibility. He co-starred as Eamon De Valera in Neil Jordan's biopic Michael Collins (1996). Rickman played Metaron, an angel who appears inside a pillar of fire only to be doused with a fire extinguisher in Dogma (1999), writer-director Kevin Smith's comedic pillorying of religious doctrine, and he reached tremendous comic heights in the Star Trek-skewering comedy Galaxy Quest (1999) as the bitter, Leonard Nimoy-esque actor Alexander Dane, a serious Shakespearean thespian who resents being typecast in his cheesy sci-fi TV show role as Dr. Lazarus. Rickman next tackled a part which, would make him an icon in the minds of a generation of book lovers and moviegoers when he appeared as the skulking, seemingly malevolent