Spanning the last two decades of his life Rickmans diaries reveal the frenetic lifestyle and frequent fretting of an actor at the height of his fame.
When Alan Rickman was in his 40s he took on two roles that proved life changing. One was the criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in the 1988 thriller Die Hard and the other was the similarly devilish Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Rickman who went on to play Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, became known as one of the great movie villains an actor who was magnetic in his menace and fury.
But if theres one thing to be gleaned from Rickmans diaries its that he was not one to bask in his successes. Despite the many doors that Die Hard and Robin Hood opened for him the films are tetchily referenced. This is partly because Rickman did not regard them as his finest work on collecting a Bafta for Robin Hood he said This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety is not everything but also because of the interviewers who insisted on quizzing him about them years later. They are like tired dogs with a very old slipper he carps.
The diaries span 22 years beginning in 1993 and ending in December 2015 a few weeks after the final entry, Rickman died aged 69 from pancreatic cancer thereby capturing him at the height of his fame. From the outside his life appears an exhausting whirl of rehearsals film screenings theatre visits awards ceremonies house purchases and mad dashes to catch planes more than once he boards a flight and realises he has left half his clothes hanging in the hotel wardrobe. He eats out several times a week sometimes with colleagues but more often with friends and his partner Rima Horton. For pushing two decades he appears to have single-handedly kept the River Cafe and The Ivy afloat.
There are naturally crisp descriptions of colleagues. Sean Mathias who directed him and Helen Mirren in Anthony and Cleopatra is a big pile of Kleenex the playwright David Hare is more self involved than any actor I have ever met. It is particularly amusing to read him railing against critics while himself displaying all the skills required for the job. About a Boy is, he observes the kind of depressing English film where single mothers and Amnesty workers are ugly people in oversized sweaters.
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