![]() After he famously lamented to his friends in the theater circuit that the screenplay was terrible, Rickman decided to liven it up by adding in his own lines to spice up the material. Unsurprisingly, Rickman had a lot to do with the dialogue itself. A threat like “I will personally remove your lying tongue” delivered to Will Scarlett ( Christian Slater) may have initially been written to be menacing, but Rickman’s delivery makes it comically over-the-top. Instead of trying to force a tragic backstory or hint at any underlying motivations beyond pure evil, Rickman chews the scenery with a droll energy. This was completely necessary, as there’s not much depth to the one-dimensional character. Rickman wasn’t given a whole lot to work with, so he played everything to the extreme, taking pleasure in each venomous threat and not ever attempting to be a real person. The Sheriff wants to bring the hooded hero to justice, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves doesn’t deviate from any of the core tropes of the story. The Sheriff of Nottingham had appeared in virtually every Robin Hood adaptation since the timeless 1938 classic The Adventures of Robin Hood, and it’s not exactly a complex role. Rickman added something new to a role that had been depicted countless times before, lampooning the tired nature of the story with a brilliantly self-aware performance. Kevin Costner was famously ridiculed for his lack of an English accent, but Alan Rickman’s wildly eccentric take on the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham drew praise from even the film’s most scathing critics. ![]() 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is best remembered for two of its performances.
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