Madly, Deeply

I first came across Alan Rickman as the superbly smarmy Obadiah Slope in The Barchester Chronicles (a performance that JK Rowling has said inspired the character of Severus Snape, so how appropriate that Rickman ended up playing him). But I fell in love with him in Truly, Madly, Deeply when he played the ghost of Juliet Stevenson's husband, and even more as Captain Brandon in Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility. For most people of a certain generation, he will always be Professor Snape; for an older demographic, he is the villain in Die Hard (never seen it). What always set him apart was his divine, languid voice -- the result of being born with a tight jaw, apparently.

These diaries run from 1993-2015. Unlike, say, Michael Palin's diaries, which always seem to have written with at least one eye firmly on eventual publication, Rickman's diaries sit in an uneasy space between being shorthand enough to seem purely personal, but elliptical enough to be frequently opaque to future readers.

It's weird to read about the actual process of film-making from the actor's perspective. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've assumed that if the action covers a year, then they've spent a year making it... whereas of course the actor might be on set for only a few days. One gathers that Rickman wasn't always easy to work with -- he's exacting, critical (including self-critical) and he can always see how things could be better. As an actor, he chafed against directors; as a director, he demanded a lot from his actors. But his prickliness was never in service of ego, always in service of the work.

But he was a wonderful, generous friend; he was always politically engaged, and he stayed with his partner from 1977 until he died in 2015. It's worth remembering that most people only write in their diaries when they're unhappy -- I know I certainly did -- and if Rickman comes across as a bit of a grump, that's probably one reason why. He also illustrated his diaries with gorgeous coloured drawings, only a handful of which are reproduced here -- I would have loved to see them all.