On the grand scale, Alan Rickman will go down as the most famous Die Hard villain. His wicked Hans Gruber set the gold standard for future Die Hard antagonists. And if we had to pick a second infamous foe, it likely would be Jeremy Irons -- who, coincidentally, played a second Gruber with an ax to grind against John McClane (Bruce Willis). But there were numerous other famous actors who played Die Hard foes, and one of them -- Robert Patrick -- has a very funny recollection of the time he died on a Bruce Willis action joint. Patrick says:
Die Hard 2 was a huge moment in my career -- it was the first time I ever got a studio movie. I get shot by Bruce Willis and they said, 'cut,' and I had done enough movies to know that you cannot really move until everybody has photographs of you. I ended up laying there for about three hours. At one point Willis comes by, and I remember looking up at him out of the corner of my eye, and he goes, 'Hey, we gotta hurry up! I think this guy is actually getting rigor mortis over here.'
It's possible that you haven't watched Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2: Die Harder 1,000,000 times (like I have), even though it is the BEST Die Hard sequel. I forgive you. To refresh your memory, Robert Patrick played one of the rogue soldiers working for Colonel Stuart (William Sadler), a madman trying to take over an airport close to Christmas. Patrick's character is guarding a communications tower that Brice Willis wants to use to send a message to a series of planes flying over the airport. And Patrick meets his maker in a gory fashion, as he recalls to EW. Oh, fine. Just watch it yourself. He buys the farm at the beginning of this clip:
I don't know if I understand the frozen part of Robert Patrick's story. He dies in a building. There are shootouts in Die Hard 2: Die Harder that happen outside, in "blizzard" conditions. Hell, one guys gets stabbed in the eye with an icicle. THAT guy could complain about frigid conditions. Also, I didn't realize that Renny Harlin shot his sequel in actual cold conditions. I always assumed it was a backlot in Los Angeles, made to look cold. But Patrick's story now has me believing the opposite.
One year after Die Hard 2, Robert Patrick went on to his most famous role as the T-1000 in James Cameron's seminal action thriller Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And there, he didn't have to worry about playing dead for hours, because he was virtually unkillable. Funny how that works.
