Madly, Deeply by Alan Rickman: diary extracts packed with ‘profound’ observations
Tone of late actor’s diaries veers from gossipy and amused to anxious and irritable

��Sardonic, aloof, witty and withering, yet with undercurrents of warmth that could surface when needed.” That was the image that Alan Rickman projected as an actor, in everything from Truly, Madly, Deeply to the Harry Potter films, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. These extracts from the late actor’s diaries will not “reinvent” his image, but they colour in the picture of a man who poured much of himself into his work.
Edited down from a million words, they start in 1993, when he was already a star – but before the Harry Potter films made him world famous – and run until his death in 2016. Within a couple of pages, he is “numb from the endless pursuit and advancement of the mediocre in this country”: the “weary élan” drips off the page.
But there are some sharp observations, too. Ewan McGregor is “self-involved to a jaw-dropping degree, but like a child, so it’s somehow not repellent”. Kate Winslet is brilliant, but “there is never a moment where she finds out anything about her fellow actors”; even Emma Thompson, whom he clearly adores, is chided for “schoolmarming” on the set of Sense and Sensibility.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The diaries give the impression of a life lived in a whirl of rehearsals, award ceremonies, fashionable restaurants and famous people, said Fiona Sturges in The Guardian. The tone veers from gossipy and amused to anxious and irritable: rather than bask in his success, he frets over roles he turned down and scenes that were cut, and wishes interviewers would stop asking him about Die Hard and Robin Hood “like tired dogs with a very old slipper”. At times his fascination with himself and other actors tries one’s patience – but just when it’s about to become too much, he bursts the bubble with a “profound” observation.
Rickman didn’t write the diaries for publication, said Thomas W. Hodgkinson in the Literary Review. That’s both a weakness, in that there are no real set-pieces or themes, and a strength, in that he never seems to be writing for effect. His “acerbic” verdicts on films and plays are a particular delight: Marvin’s Room, he writes, is “another of those American plays which insist that you feel something. I don’t think anger & frustration is what they had in mind.”
He does a lot of complaining, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times, and at times it got a bit much for me. But one thing Rickman never grumbles about is his marriage, to Rima Horton. She was with him to the end, and the final pages of the book, as his “gloriously expansive” life contracts to a checklist of hospital appointments, are “heartbreaking”.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Quiz of The Week: 24 – 30 May
Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
The Week Unwrapped: Will Europe beat China and India to the North Pole?
Podcast Plus, is the man who designed the iPhone going to kill his own creation? And what's going on at the equalities watchdog?
-
Is it finally all change for train Wi-Fi?
In The Spotlight South Western Railway's 5G Wi-Fi service has changed the way passengers connect – but will the new system catch on?
-
Ancient India: living traditions – 'ethereal and sensual' exhibition
The Week Recommends Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism are explored in show that remains 'remarkably compact'
-
6 well-preserved homes built in the 1930s
Feature Featuring a restored 1934 colonial in Arizona and a cold-storage warehouse turned loft in New York City
-
Things in Nature Merely Grow: memoir of 'harsh beauty' after loss
The Week Recommends Chinese-American novelist Yiyun Li's 'devastating' memoir explores the deaths of her two sons
-
Sirens: entertaining satire on the lives of the ultra-wealthy stars Julianne Moore
The Week Recommends This 'blackly comic affair' unfurls at a 'breakneck speed'
-
Mrs Warren's Profession: 'tour-de-force' from Imelda Staunton and daughter Bessie Carter
The Week Recommends Mother-daughter duo bring new life to George Bernard Shaw's morality play
-
Critics' choice: Steak houses that break from tradition
Feature Eight hours of slow-roasting prime rib, a 41-ounce steak, and a former Catholic school chapel turned steakhouse
-
Tash Aw's 6 favorite books about forbidden love
Feature The Malaysian novelist recommends works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and more
-
Film reviews: Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, Lilo & Stitch, and Final Destination: Bloodlines
Feature Tom Cruise risks life and limb to entertain us, a young girl befriends a destructive alien, and death stalks a family that resets fate's toll.