Before They Were Stars: Alan Rickman as Tybalt in “Romeo & Juliet”

I can remember a time before the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version of Romeo & Juliet existed and the only filmed versions of the play that schools could show to students were very boring and dry BBC versions. You know, the versions that insisted on using virtually every single passage of Shakespeare’s text, no matter how badly it affected the pacing. We watched this 1978 BBC version of Romeo & Juliet in one of my high school English classes, but our boredom suddenly subsided when we recognized a young Alan Rickman pop up in the role of Tybalt! After working as a stage actor for many years, this was Rickman’s first time acting in front of a camera and, aside from his Beatles haircut, he pretty much looks and sounds exactly the same 32 years later.

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