Emma Thompson has delivered the most heartbreaking of tributes to her frequent on-screen collaborator and friend, Alan Rickman, who passed away after a cancer battle on Thursday.

“Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye,” Thompson said who played Karen, wife to Rickman’s Harry in 2003’s Love Actually.

“What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was – his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view.”