Fun fact: There was a rumor that Rickman knew Snape’s fate the entire time from the moment he was picked by J.K. Rowling. In 2011, Alan Rickman told HitFix, “When I did the first film she’d only written three or four books, so nobody knew where it was really going except her … she only gave me a tiny piece of information, which helped me think it was a more ambiguous route.”