If Alan Rickman ever met or mingled with ordinary folk, he never recorded this in his diaries, which are an epic of name dropping. 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 When Rickman plays charades, Bette Midler keeps score.
I think my favourite moment in this book is when Sarah, Duchess of York, embraces Rickman in a lift. ‘Eric she squeals, having mistaken Rickman for Eric Idle the camel faced Python.
A copper-bottomed celebrity, Rickman, born into a working-class family in Acton, in 1946 is invited to spend luxurious weekends in Venice with the founders of Microsoft. He is always running the red carpet gauntlet. I feel like I am walking around in a magazine he sighs as he catches yet another transatlantic plane to New York or Los Angeles.
Look closely, however, and Rickman’s life was rather superficial and hellish, a flurry of pre dawn calls and taxi rides, endless long-haul flights 27 in 1998 alone, publicity junkets, launch parties and official receptions. He has appointments with accountants, lawyers, costume fitters, producers and directors, none of whom he much likes. He often complains about people’s fatal indecisions and non involvement with others’.
And the reader thinks, pot, kettle. Yet Rickman is genuinely stunned when Sean Mathias, trying to direct him in Shakespeare, finally demands Would it hurt you to show some fing charm In her Foreword, Dame Thompson says Rickman was profoundly nurturing and imperturbably distant,’ ‘temperamental and languid’. We do not see much evidence of warmth or compassion.
Indeed, Rickman says he finds the obligations of friendship a chore and is exhausted by listening to people’s problems. Worrying about others is to become a personal launderette service As his main pal is over voluble Ruby Wax, you can see he has a point.
Temper and coldness, on the other hand, Rickman does sense in himself he agrees how on film sets he can be difficult temperamental uncommunicative, sullen, sulky brooding and prevaricating’.Temper and coldness, on the other hand, Rickman does sense in himself he agrees how on film sets he can be difficuld temperamental, uncommunicative sullen sulky brooding and prevaricating.
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