London: The personal diaries of the late actor Alan Rickman, known for the “Harry Potter” film franchise, “Die Hard” and “Love, Actually”, will be published as a book in late 2022. According to The Guardian, the 27 volumes of handwritten diaries, spanning more than 25 years of Rickman’s life and career, will be edited down into a single book.
The popular film and stage actor, best known for playing Professor Severus Snape in “Harry Potter” series, wrote about everything from his thoughts on acting to insights on friendships and politics in his journals. Rickman, who died in 2016 at age 69 following a battle with cancer, began writing these diaries in the early 1990s with the intention of publishing them.
Publisher Canongate has acquired the rights to the book, reportedly titled “The Diaries of Alan Rickman”. It will be edited by Alan Taylor, editor of the Scottish Review of Books, who also put together “The Country Diaries”, a collection of pastoral journalist from Beatrix Potter, Dorothy Wordsworth, John Fowles and more.
Rickman’s wife Rima Horton said she is looking forward to the book. “I’m delighted that Canongate will be publishing Alan’s diaries and couldn’t have wished for a finer appointment of editor than Alan Taylor. The diaries reveal not just Alan Rickman the actor but the real Alan his sense of humour, his sharp observation, his craftsmanship and his devotion to the arts,” Horton said.
Taylor said Rickman’s diaries were “anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid”. “They make compulsive reading and offer a peerless insight into the daily life of a remarkable actor, who was as beloved in the US as he surely was in the UK,” he added. Rickman, whose distinctive voice still rings in fans’ ears, was also an avid theatre-goer who reviewed plays he attended and shared behind-the-scenes stories from the set of “Harry Potter”, which he was a part of for a decade, between 2001 and 2011.
His career had already taken off with performances like Valmont in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” at the Royal Shakespeare Company and in films as Hans Gruber, the villain opposite Bruce Willis in “Die Hard”, when he started writing journals. His other negative roles include the sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”, as well as a terrifying Rasputin in the 1995 HBO film.
His other notable roles include “Truly, Madly, Deeply”, “Sense and Sensibility”, and “The Song of Lunch”. Rickman made his directorial debut with “The Winter Guest” with his “Sense and Sensibility” star Emma Thompson. He also reunited with Kate Winslet, the other star of the movie, in 2015’s “A Little Chaos”.
He continued writing these diaries until his death.
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