Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries

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His brevity encourages speed, you see; encourages sailing through for a film or a reference; a little dish, an anecdote, an insider's remark, and there's not enough of that to maintain such a pace. There were a lot of people I have heard of mentioned throughout this diary and also a lot of people I didn't know (directors etc. He claims never to have met a curious politician, “one who asks questions rather than makes little speeches”. There are many mentions of shared meals but limited insight into characters (apart from those deemed by Alan to be open, kind and funny).

One was the criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in the 1988 thriller Die Hard, and the other was the similarly devilish Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It is particularly amusing to read him railing against critics, while himself displaying all the skills required for the job. In my judgement, there shouldn't be any malice derived from such writings as they are the private thoughts of someone who may or may not want or need to bring his thoughts out into the real world (would you? The last months of entries are moving not because Rickman relates much about his treatment, or his hopes and fears.

K. Rowling “nervously” gave him towards the beginning of the series for helping him get through the series, before she had finished writing the books. He was the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and got off these paradigmatic lines: “That’s it then. However this was a diary which probably wasn’t intended for publication, and I admittedly read it mainly for the references to the filming of the Harry Potter movies for which there are a reasonable number of entries across the years from 2000 to 2011. He didn’t just mentor Ruby though, he was on RADA’s council for some years, championing the young actors who came through its doors, although he does get fed up with some of the governance issues that get in the way of the acting process. I love Rickman’s work but this is read by a person who mispronounces so many words, and whose tone does not capture Rickman’s brilliance at all.

Kiefer Sutherland says hello’; ‘Dan Day-Lewis jogs by, sweating’; ‘Terry Gilliam arrives with Johnny Depp’; ‘the first people I see are Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise’; ‘all of a sudden, there was Julia Roberts’. It's like he's invited readers backstage access into his life (gatecrash more like, as I don't think we're invited). He eats out several times a week, sometimes with colleagues but more often with friends and his partner, Rima Horton. 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.Finally, it is Rickman who is operated on for prostate cancer and who then finds out he has inoperable pancreatic cancer. Bonnie read the introduction penned by Emma Thompson, Rickman’s long-time friend and frequent co-star. All in all, I am left with the view that he was, after all, just a person like any other and my memory of him would have been richer had I not read this.

Referring to Harry Potter producers David Heyman, David Barron, and director David Yates as “the three Davids,” Rickman wrote that he wished to “bang the three David’s heads against the nearest wall” after viewing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. If Alan Rickman ever met or mingled with ordinary folk, he never recorded this in his diaries, which are an epic of name-dropping.Yes he's a bit cantankerous and yes he's pretty opinionated but no, he's never rude or disrespectful.