The late actor is on gossipy, sometimes caustic form in his diaries – but they ultimately reveal a man who always tried to do what was right.
Everyone loved the actor Alan Rickman – he was elegant, charismatic, could style out villainy, had the best voice. It was shocking when he died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 69. These much-anticipated diaries cover 1993 to 2015: the era of the Harry Potter films, Galaxy Quest and Love Actually, and stage performances in plays such as Antony and Cleopatra and Private Lives. The diaries are all that he left behind – and they’ve already created headlines because of their sometimes caustic comments, on everything from Liam Gallagher (“great singer….absolute tosser”) to a Tom Stoppard play (“bores me rigid”). The film About a Boy is “a depressing English film”, while he hates “The Full Monty/Billy Elliot/Bend it like Beckham version of Britain”.
He knew and worked with everyone, and his starry friends may be taken aback to find in here that they talked too much and were self-obsessed (as opposed to whom, you sometimes feel like saying). There is a hilarious mismatch between praise in the introduction by the book’s editor, Alan Taylor, for Rickman’s generosity in paying everyone’s restaurant bill, and beady mentions by the actor in the diary of people who expected this kind of treatment from him, and didn’t thank him. He has some sharp lines – poor Emma Watson (whom he liked) will never live down “[her] diction is this side of Albania at times.” Meanwhile, he says of Tony Blair: “He can appear to be Head Boy rather than Prime Minister.” And when he goes to see a preview of the film Bean, Rowan Atkinson is in the seat behind so “laughs are forced” (Rickman endearingly adds that he himself “Ate whole packet of M&Ms” during the film).
He is undoubtedly grumpy. In restaurants he wishes jokily for a handgun, or an earthquake, to deal with selected unnamed people. But he also comes over as a very decent person: he is forever visiting sick people, helping young actors, attending political demonstrations, sitting through dull but worthwhile committee meetings. You feel he always wanted to do what was right, even if it was inconvenient to himself, and that is a rare character trait.
Harry Potter fans will enjoy the entries covering filming, especially as it was not all such a big happy family as we thought, and there were some mighty important actors kept waiting around and not too happy – Glorified Extras, he calls them, with the list featuring Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Robert Hardy, Miranda Richardson, Robbie Coltrane, Frances de la Tour. He says they tire of “this monumental waste of energies”, and of “expensive Dr Who stuff”. They are also physically tired, think the child actors need too much attention, and that there is not enough help from the directors – although they do manage splendid gossiping and story-sharing sessions while sitting around. Rickman tries to get out of the series after the second film, but doesn’t succeed, and is complaining he was “shafted” by director Mike Newell in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire two years later.
Alan Rickman is the luvvie’s luvvie, so much so that at times the book reads like one of the satirist Craig Brown’s parodies of a celebrity diary. The actor is forever lunching and gossiping, wants more discussion of motivation for his roles, hates being criticized himself, but loves to criticise others. It is his most marked characteristic.
Two moments sum this up: when he sees the 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility (he plays Colonel Brandon), he complains that there is not enough about the men (ie him) and their “journeys” in the film. In a Jane Austen adaptation. But he obviously genuinely believes he is thinking of the story, not himself. And there’s the excellent entry where he goes to see a Stephen Poliakoff play, and the director spots him and hurtles across: “Absolutely accosted by Stephen in the foyer with instructions that I was not to give notes to his actresses.” Based on his endless telling everyone what they are doing wrong for their own good, this is possibly the most sensible reaction anyone has to him. “I shouldn’t say anything, but do” (Oct 2001) might as well be his life motto.
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