Alan Rickman’s diaries: ‘Ang seems nervous. He probably needs a hug. Like Hugh Grant’
Movie-goers caught their first sight of Alan Rickman in 1988 in the action thriller Die Hard. At the age of 42, antediluvian by Hollywood standards, he was cast as Hans Gruber, a Teutonic terrorist who has seized control of a Los Angeles skyscraper and taken hostages. Acting opposite Bruce Willis’s NYPD detective, Rickman stole the show with his devil-may-care interpretation of a psychopath and received a deluge of plaudits.
Until then his career had largely been forged in Britain, most notably – after Rada and an apprenticeship in repertory theatre – at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he stood out in plays such as Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Following Die Hard, he was in constant demand for the big screen. First came the 1990 romantic comedy Truly, Madly, Deeply, with Juliet Stevenson, next Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which he was unforgettable as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
It was post-Robin Hood that Rickman began keeping his diary in earnest. What follows is an edited account of his next few early years on screen, pre-Harry Potter, and a return to the stage opposite Helen Mirren in Antony and Cleopatra.
Alan Taylor, editor of the Diaries
1994
8 March
First day [filming in Dublin] on An Awfully Big Adventure.
9 March
Afternoon and evening we planned tomorrow’s bed scenes and shot the first kiss. Georgina [Cates] brave and focused.
10 March
All morning bonking (screen type), humping, exhausting. Life definitely not mirroring art – if anybody had sex in that position they would break their wrists second time out.
12 March
Hangover.
3pm Motorbike lesson. 20 minutes to discover clutch control on something that reminds me of a big dangerous horse.
29 March
Beryl Bainbridge [author of An Awfully Big Adventure] arrives. Caught napping with her.
6 April
Hello to Prunella Scales – detailed, complicated actress and the person is slow to reveal herself, too. Like persuading some petals to open a bit more. There is a great deal of self-containment on this set. Ms Scales, Mike N, The Diva [Georgina Cates], me …
8 April
My shot of the day. Walk up a few steps. Stop. Turn. Look. Look away. The simplest tasks can make you feel like an unoiled robot.
‘The simplest tasks can make you feel like an unoiled robot’: Alan Rickman and Georgina Cates in An Awfully Big Adventure, 1995. Photograph: Photo 12/Alamy
18 April
Lunch on the set. A last-dayish atmosphere. Then to the aquarium. Freezing water and, strangely enough, very wet; a frogman grabbing my ankles; eyes open; blood on the forehead; staring. It takes a while.
19 April
10.45 → flight to London.
An overall ache is developing, not emotional, just a reaction to the aquarium dunking.
22 April
8pm Ruby [Wax]’s birthday party.
Carrie Fisher is there, funny and fast. Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmondson, Zoë Wanamaker, Joanna Lumley, John Sessions. Someone asks Jennifer S what she does. The inevitable late night row …
11 May
Labour party European gala dinner. John Smith, Robin Cook, Tony Blair all say hello. Many an encounter, many a speech. Gordon Brown looking sooo bored.
12 May
John Smith is dead. Last night I spoke with him. We all know he would have been a great leader. His competence and humour and quiet strength didn’t sell newspapers until they became his epitaph.
Talk to Emma [Thompson]. ‘Her people’ and ‘my people’ now.
1 August
Meet Fiona [Shaw] & Deborah [Warner] – one of the major terrible twos in the art world. Hildegard [Bechtler] joins and we’re on the train to Glyndebourne. When you get there – there it all is – a bit of little Olde England still determinedly putting out its collapsible chairs, sandwiches, champagne. I kept thinking “someone with a machine gun will appear any minute”.
15 October
To Ruby [Wax] and Ed [Bye, her husband] for a brief glimpse of Ruby’s interview with Madonna. But who’s doing all the talking? Guess.
25 November
Thanksgiving party at Sandra & Michael Kamen [American composer]’s. All I wanted was an autograph book – Kate Bush, Bryan Adams, David Bowie, Stevie Winwood.
1995
8 February
Emma Thompson phones [about Sense and Sensibility]. OK I’m [going to] meet him [Ang Lee].
13 February
Talk to Emma. “Her people” and “my people” now.
18 March
3pm To Ang Lee. He gets the Sensibility, what’s the Sense? How to play, how to shoot Brandon, “the only strong man in the story”. I said: “I’ll be doing it, you’ll just have to shoot it.”
6 April
Dublin. 8pm Irish premiere [of An Awfully Big Adventure]. Feel like an elder statesman reading the letter from Mike [Newell].
7 April
10am Wandering the Dublin streets before getting back to the Shelbourne for 11am to find – ! – Neil Jordan and Stephen Woolley re The Big Fella [eventually named Michael Collins]. Will I do it [play Eamon de Valera]? Lose weight? What other commitments?
25 April
Collected [at Plymouth station]. 20 mins drive to the location [for Sense and Sensibility]. At lunchtime the trailer fills up with Imogen Stubbs, Gemma Jones, Emma Thompson – Imogen & Emma all Austened-up. Gemma in hiking boots … Spend the pm doing hair and makeup. Somewhere around 8 we do the required stand up, sit down, look left, look right in a somewhat tight atmosphere, not to mention coat. Gently humiliating.
26 April
9.35 Train back to London.
Still feeling faintly depressed by yesterday. So much attention to “The Look”. What about “The Content”? And what about creating a working environment with Ang – who, reading between the already apparent lines, is used to “conducting” his actors, rather than nurturing.
‘The inscrutability was partly a protective shield’: Alan Rickman with Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Photograph: Columbia/Allstar
2 May
A 6.15 wake up for my first actual day on Sense and Sensibility. Makeup and hair becomes a gentle negotiation – hair, especially. Heated rollers eventually win. Kate W looking so beautiful in her gilded wedding gown. Emma T with her eyes everywhere. Harriet W & I uncool enough to admit just enjoying being here.
Drinks in the bar at 8pm – Emma, Imelda, Hugh L[aurie], Hugh G[rant], Gemma Jones, Harriet, Kate W. Hugh G his usual snappy, sharp, acid self. In to dinner with 2 x Hugh, Harriet & me. The conversation moves away from gossip and we talk of British & US film production. Hugh Laurie turns out to be an action movie freak. Hugh G is fascinated by figures, fees, %.
4 May
I’m beginning to get the hang of Ang.
9 May
Emma’s danger is of knowing everything. She can’t, no one can.
10 May
And another day not called. Lunch on the set. Then into boots and breeches and off to the stables.
12 May
Another 7.30 wake up. Another day not being used. The sun shines. They do something else.
13 May
7am call – and finally I’m on … As it turns out the scene becomes a nightmare of rushed decisions, manipulations, too many looks. It isn’t thought through so time is wasted … Which means that acting is out the window … I end the day feeling humiliated and angry – but I can’t show it.
19 May
Sunday am. I am reminded, watching Emma with crew, director, producers, fellow actors, of a young girl arranging her dolls in her pretend classroom.
26 June
7.20am pick-up to go to Heathrow and Dublin [for Michael Collins].
As I got out of the car [in Dublin], there is Julia Roberts, her waist is the most encirclable. Upstairs to find Liam [Neeson] & Aidan [Quinn]. Neil Jordan arrives a few minutes later – we all sit down and talk through the de Valera scenes. Neil is his usual jitterbugging self – like a grasshopper nipping from topic to topic.
29 June
To Shepperton [for Sense and Sensibility] … Of course, the set, the newspapers, the TV and everywhere is obsessed with Hugh Grant and his Sunset trick … [he was arrested in LA with a sex worker] So many column inches, so many other things we should concern ourselves with. The scenes feel as if they are being ticked off now … Ang seems nervous. He probably needs a hug. Like Hugh.
8 August
To … Dublin. And the Shelbourne. Catch-up-fast time. Hire a video recorder, read the books, get under Dev’s skin. Hopefully.
9 August
8.45 pick-up → the set … The reconstruction of O’Connell Street is quite brilliant. Post Office, Mansion House, cobbles and – frighteningly – the platform for Dev’s speech. All day the crowds grow and grow – rumour has it that 2,000 more were sent home. That leaves 2–3,000 inside all staring at me since Neil [Jordan] comes to announce that the speech is first. Is it his nerves that makes him question the hair, the costume, the accent, the everything???
In the end he’s happy and we just do it. No rehearsal. Just do it.
10 August
Photo call for the Irish press. Julia Roberts a mite pissed-off at being kept waiting …
22 August
Kilmainham Gaol. Two minutes in one of the cells and I’m starting to get anxious – what must it have been like? They were all so proud to die. They knew when it was coming [and] what it was for. This is beginning to feel like something I just have to hand myself over to – it will take care of itself. Hidden forces are very strong.
‘Hidden forces are very strong’: Alan Rickman with Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn in Michael Collins, 1996. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
12 September
Night shoot at Kilmainham. Sandy Powell [costume designer] has made Dev a fetching coat and bonnet for his Lincoln prison escape. Stephen Woolley says the rushes are great. This is one man (of few words normally) who I believe.
19 September
1.30 pick-up. Through the Wicklow mountains to Glenmalure and a thatched cottage by a stream. For the first time Dev in a scene with the “Fresh-Faced Kid” ie Jonathan [Rhys Meyers, playing De Valera’s assassin] who’s on his third movie this year, plays flute, tin whistle and drums, has just returned from backpacking in Vietnam and is, of course, also impossibly good-looking …
21 September
… 6pm pick-up.
Another lump of Ireland commandeered for the Pub and Hayrick [scene]. The town stays up all night to see it. Eventually, my shot is at 4am. Maybe it’s just as well. The shivering is fairly authentic by then. Bed at 7am.
12 October
9.30 Car to Goldcrest to loop Sense and Sensibility. Good to see Ang. Emma arrives at 2pm. The continuing conundrum. Lovable, affectionate and somehow starring daily in the movie of her life …
31 December
To meet Liam [Neeson] & Natasha [Richardson] for what turns out to be a wonderful, chatty, friendly lunch – Liam has seen Michael Collins and loves it so – ONWARD. To Lee Grant [American actor]’s apt at 11.45pm – huge room, lots of people (including G Paltrow & Brad Pitt) stand around, hold glass, smile, chat, leave.
1996
22 January
Watch S&S in growing dismay. It has been cut to focus only on the women’s journey – the men are mindless. Sad – we should care who they are marrying.
14 February
Academy nominations for Emma & Kate yesterday but not Ian [McKellen], nor Nicole K. Crazy days.
The trouble with this job is that you can watch yourself & your friends growing older in full colour, close up
18 February
12 noon Isabelle Huppert’s lunch at the Ivy upstairs. 34? people round the beautiful oval table. The kind of day you wish would go on and on … the room full of echoes. Especially of women I have played opposite – and as I look around – Juliet [Stevenson], Fiona [Shaw], Paola [Dionisotti], Harriet [Walter], Saskia [Reeves], Deborah [Warner], Beatie [Edney], Zoë [Wanamaker], Gillian [Barge], Anna [Massey] – it is a source of pride.
21 February
2am Judy Hofflund [Rickman’s agent] calls from LA for an early Happy Birthday.
The trouble with this job is that you can watch yourself & your friends growing older in full colour, close up. Flip a switch to rewind or fast forward.
6.30 The car is here and by 6.45 we’re on the way to the Curzon Mayfair for Sense and Sensibility premiere which is a good distraction from the birthday … Old friends in new frocks, line-up for Prince Charles (tell him he should have played my part) and in to the film. Terrible sound but cuts apart it’s a beautiful piece of work.
2 June
9ish To Searcy’s for Brian Cox’s birthday party. All human acting was there.
11 December
7pm To Nicole Farhi’s Christmas party … David Hare has not so much softened as melted with the marriage and now the lucky sod is off to Peru & Colombia for Christmas.
1997
14 July
7pm Festival Hall for Guardian’s summer party. Absolutely fascinating. Degrees of leglessness unknown other than to journalists.
1998
18 January
Golden Globes. Movie stars in vastly expensive dresses they can only wear once; name-dropping on a big scale at … the CAA party – Gus Van Sant, Matt Damon (I was fairly drunk, grabbing his lapels to tell him he’s a really, no really good actor), Minnie Driver, Lauren Bacall, Shirley MacLaine (she loved The Winter Guest, my hero), Winona Ryder, Joan Cusack (squished in a lift – could we work together?), Kevin Kline. Giving the Golden Globe to Alfre Woodard was BEST!
18 March
[Filming of Kevin Smith’s Dogma in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]
11 Costume fitting. Versace rules. 3pm Read with Linda Fiorentino … She’s everything she looks and sounds – smoky, dark, a coming-on disposition. Somewhere in the middle Ben Affleck crashes in, later Matt Damon. The room is suddenly full of baseball caps, popping cans of water/iced tea/whatever, peeling oranges, potato chips, cigarette smoke. We bungee-jump our way through the script.
30 April
A rehearsal. Linda asks for two lines out of five. Has she looked at the scene apart from on the drive in? I am catapulted into a dark and frowning place – silent with resentment at having to work solo. Again. And so – a long day with a scene that’s all about prosthetics and 80lb wings. Pain versus concentration. And still Linda blows her lines.
9 May
Somewhere on the way back to the hotel, I felt a familiar knife-like pain in my lower back. The wings have caught up with me.
13 May
To the hospital for X-rays. Fortunately, no disc problems but muscle spasms are eased by a brace (which I probably should have been wearing with the wings anyway).
30 May
To the Star Lake auditorium [near Pittsburgh] to walk on water. Which all works fine apart from the by now predictable 3am when the camera comes round, and my brain is frying gently. But there’s a vaguely celebratory atmosphere, the lake lit beautifully and as dawn broke we drank some champagne in the makeup trailer and said goodbyes.
6 June
7.30 Wangle my way on to Concorde. Hooray. Ivana Trump adds a bit of dash sitting in front of me just where I can watch her checking her press clippings, looking through itineraries and then rather touchingly looking long & hard at photos of loved ones before putting them back in her wallet.
4 August
That’s it. I’m doing it. Antony and Cleopatra. NT. Helen M[irren]. Sean M[atthias]. Relief.
19 August
5.30 First run (words) of Act 1. Too much acting from me …
28 August
TO ALASKA! [for Microsoft founder Paul Allen’s party]. This year’s guest list included – Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, James Cameron, Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan, Jeff Goldblum, Candice Bergen, Annabeth Gish, Ed Begley, Dave Stewart, Deepak Chopra, Noel Redding, Dan Aykroyd, Robin Williams, Patti Smith, Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmondson, Clare Peploe, Douglas Adams, Quincy Jones, Carrie Fisher, etc, etc. All mixed up with scientists, architects and Belfast family members.
1 September
RETURN FROM ALASKA.
11.30 (Managed some sleep) … Car back home. Change. On to NT arrive 3pm. Straight into reading Act 3
7 September
First day of moving the play. By late afternoon – alarm bells. Some terribly demonstrated work and bad verse speaking. The set proving to be awkward.
23 September
These have been difficult days, running scenes with that awful grasping sense of the text. So – no impetus inside. Text being chopped every which way, so no impetus outside.
28 September
Run through Act 3. Ohmigod.
5 October
7pm First run – Act 1. Sean’s happy. It feels like a mess to me. Except for Helen who is free, creative and flying.
‘It feels like a mess to me’: Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre in London, 1998. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA Archive/PA Photos
8 October
Hungover in a major way.
3pm The Tech starts. Memorable moment in the wings as Helen says: “I’m so happy ... all I dreamed of as a girl was to be a queen in a big theatre …”
10 October
Like a car crash we get past the interval and on into the second half. My questions are getting larger & more urgent. Where is the music? Where will the story be? Time and again where is the exactness?
17 October
1.30 First matinee.
Somewhere around 6.25 … Sean comes in, looking wired. For some reason he was on the attack. “Would it hurt you to show some fucking charm?” I was stunned, said don’t speak to me like that, just give me the notes, this is the first time you’ve mentioned this, I’m piecing the part together etc, etc. As I write this I’m still bewildered. Had people been nagging him? What? Ian McK & Charlotte Cornwell came round having loved it. Were they sent too?
18 October
A day of relative stillness, Sleep. Newspapers. Planet Organic. Cappuccino. Ironing the odd shirt. Answering mail. Cooking supper. Thinking. Thinking. Rima, blessedly and unsentimentally, with me.
20 October
7pm Press night.
As per usual everything heightened. Later to Soho House.
21 October
And then the morning quietness which means the press is not good. Eventually I hear the tentative messages and get the picture.
25 October
Another heavy silence hangs over the grey, grey day … By now this means only more bad [Sunday] press … OK – on through the next six weeks.
26 October
7pm These are the tough shows. Everyone knows what has been said. No one refers to it. Except at the interval (after a shaky first half) there’s a very touching, anonymous note from the company sending love and loyalty.
20 November
Long phone call from Ian McKellen. Geeing up, reminding, empowering, focusing. He’s currently rehearsing Present Laughter “without a director”.
28 November
…a happy audience. More and more people saying ‘What were they talking about?’
1 December
1.30 The curse of the matinée. From which it is hard to recover.
7 This is an endurance test. One scene at a time, conserve energy where you can.
3 December
And the last performance. Just to help it along – a barracker is in the audience apparently shouting “Rubbish!” at one point and then “Quiet, ladies” as Helen & I are kissing. Removed at the interval.
The next dozen years were defined by Rickman’s role as Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, chronicled in the diary entries in Saturday’s Guardian. Subsequently, as well as an award-winning run on Broadway in Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar; starring in Michael Hoffman’s film Gambit, alongside Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Stanley Tucci; and Eye in the Sky with Helen Mirren, Rickman went on to co-write and direct A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts. A passion project, it took him four years to get the film off the ground and into the can. It premiered at the Toronto film festival in 2014.
2013
25 February
2pm Greek Street. Casting session [for A Little Chaos].
Actor talking to actor while being director. Not comfortable especially when the parts are so small in terms of lines.
18 March
Kate and I walk through the script. And she really takes the time to examine every loose thought, every wayward word. These are the fine tunings now. And we can’t lose sight of the drive toward story-telling.
8 April
The day Margaret Thatcher died. Rima can’t watch the coverage, I have a blank fascination at seeing so many years pan across one’s memories, along with mindless adulation
15 April
A Little Chaos – Day One. Chenies [the film’s location, a Buckinghamshire manor house].
16 April
6.15 To Chenies.
A day memorable for the carriage crash and for hilarity caused by my using the walkie-talkie as a telephone. Also KWs husband [Ned Rocknroll] arrived and there was a distinct sense of an onset presence that distracted concentration…
17 April
6.15 To Chenies.
Kate gives so little of herself – everything as an actor – but there is never a moment where she finds out anything about her fellow actors – or even says bravo or thank you. Strange to witness. Such a deliberately erected wall.
29 May
10.10 To Cliveden.
Into the King’s Bedroom, with Stanley. Who didn’t entirely know his not many lines …
7 June
This is our last official day of shooting. Kate is now 16 (?) weeks pregnant and giving everything. By the end of each day she is wiped but still unbelievably focused.
9 June
A Little Chaos – Last day. Lights up, lights down. Au revoir to Kate. She moves swiftly and cleanly on – total commitment to everything. Ned, the children, this film, the next film, the kids’ baked beans.
Wrap party. Which turned out to be a joyous thing. Chiswick House. Great venue … But all these sudden goodbyes to people who have shared the inside of your head, heart, insecurities, triumphs … now the strange absence.
13 September
7.45pm Kathy Lette [for dinner].
Oh Kathy ...
The guests – Barry Humphries, Terry Gilliam, Helena Kennedy, Ruby & Ed, Ed & Justine Miliband, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jemima Khan, Salman Rushdie. For God’s sake. Exhausting just writing that. But good chats with Justine M. (the pressure of it all) and Ed is upright and still looking forward. An inspiration and still curious about everybody and everything.
2014
17 February
5.30 Buckingham Palace.
Sectioned into a line-up – Angela Lansbury, Steve McQueen, Jane Horrocks, Lenny Henry, Luke Treadaway - to meet the Queen. Who shakes my hand and moves on, as ever. Then down to the concert in the ballroom – huge, no microphones, people can’t hear. Then a voice in my ear – ‘The Duchess of Cambridge would like to meet you.’ And nice and chatty she was, too. A hundred faces to chat to. Impossible.
13 September
Toronto film festival.
6.30 To Roy Thomson Hall. Watch the film [A Little Chaos].
At the end, 2,000 people stood and clapped loud and long.
17 October
London film festival, Odeon West End.
5.35 Red carpet. “What attracted you to this project?” times 10. Wonderful concentration in the cinema. Huge applause at the end. 9ish the Union Club. Friends all seriously knocked out by the film.
31 December
SOUTH AFRICA Blazing hot day on the beach. A beer, a Coke, a tangerine.
2015
2 March
Melbourne.
7pm A Little Chaos screening. Watching from the stairs. The Q&A is the same five questions only longer.
17 April
The early morning silence [after reviews are published] that I know well from the past … People love it. Critics – some won’t go there. One, I would hazard, wrote his review before he’d seen it.
24 April
EN ROUTE TO NEW YORK HAVING BEEN IN BERLIN AND VIENNA.
Hanging about in the Concorde Room for the 5.05 to Newark … This [A Little Chaos] is the kind of work I make. If I am to be disallowed then – I just stop.
13 July
2.45 The Wellington [hospital]. As instructed. And tested.
14 July
5.30 Dr Landau, Harley Street.
A different kind of diary now.
It is at this point that Rickman learns he has pancreatic cancer.
Rima Horton writes:
Alan’s last diary entry was on 12 December, but he had been getting weaker and writing less for some time. All through the autumn he was eating less and often feeling sick. But we continued to do most of the things that had always been part of our life. We saw films and plays, met friends, went out to dinner or entertained at home. Alan also spent a lot of time watching TV – his two favourite programmes at that time were Don’t Tell the Bride and Say Yes to the Dress. Our trip to New York in November was very important. To stay in our flat again and see so many of the friends who had meant so much to us over the years. Alan loved New York.
He went downhill after that. He was admitted to hospital on 20 December and never left.
Directing A Little Chaos, 2014. Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
The last two weeks of Alan’s life were extraordinary. His hospital room was turned into a salon. Belinda [Lang] produced a table-top Christmas tree, Emma T brought in a standard lamp, cushions and a throw to cover the sofa. And an infuser. Miranda R added a window bird-feeder. I brought a beautiful table lamp from home.
Different friends came in each day. Sometimes, Alan told me who he wanted to see. Otherwise, they just came. There was often a lot of laughter. Alan was in bed but always a major voice in the proceedings.
He designed his own funeral. Ian Rickson (theatre director) was put in charge. Alan chose where it would take place, who would speak and what music would be played.
He was surrounded by people who loved him and up until 13 January was still in control of everything that was going on around him. But he wasn’t there after that, and he died at 9.15 in the morning of 14 January 2016. I was there. He wasn’t in pain. He just went.
Alan was cremated on the morning of 3 February with close friends and family present. The funeral service was held that afternoon in the Actors’ Church in the heart of London’s theatre district. The chosen music was Uptown Funk and Take It with Me by Tom Waits. We finished with everyone singing The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore. Then, in keeping with tradition, the Reverend Richard Syms asked us to give Alan “one last wonderful standing ovation”.
Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries edited by Alan Taylor is published by Canongate (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply