“Arwen Holm phones,” writes Alan Rickman, “to tell me of a nasty little piece in the Telegraph saying how unsmiling I was in the local deli.” This is from his diaries Madly, Deeply, which are published posthumously — he died in 2016 of pancreatic cancer. The name is based on the film Truly, Madly, Deeply, in which Rickman plays Jamie, a dead, cello-playing Labour activist, who returns from the grave to console his devastated lover.
Jamie is closer to Rickman than any of his other parts: not only was Rickman also a Labour activist who played the cello, but he was similarly needling and obsessive. And I wonder if Madly, Deeply is supposed to perform the same spell for a different woman: the resurrection of a loved one. This book is not a finished piece of art. Its publication feels personal: it is a fragment of a man, a fragment of the cult of the actor, and vanity by proxy. Obliviously, this book investigates that cult of the actor.
People will say that they like the diaries because they like Rickman the actor, and they want more of him: but you don’t get that from the diaries. He was clearly likeable, and generous: he mocked himself in Galaxy Quest, playing a Shakespearian actor slumming it in a Star Trek rip-off for money, and he felt that tension between artistic and commercial imperatives. (An entry written during a Harry Potter film says bleakly: “More Great Hall. More turkey. More Hogwarts song”.) But the diaries aren’t good. Rickman is a subtle actor, but he is not a writer, and I think he knows it. He agonises over the entries. He hints that he lied to them, fretting that he cannot remember the “coded details and the sharp thoughts hidden between the safer lines”. A good diarist will betray his friends and, above all, himself, as consciously and willingly as an actor will put “the chicken” on his head for the part. But Rickman is more oblique: his confessions are accidental.
You yearn for him to tell more — to inhabit himself consciously. But the most he manages is to call women he dislikes “Ms”, beadily; suggest that famous actresses are controlling, and write “[He] has a wonderfully pitched reading. I wish he would find different mouth-shapes,” about Simon Russell Beale. He is fragile. He struggles. He watches Yes To The Dress.
Rickman knows that fame is self-hating: the phenomenon of wanting to engage with fantasy people not real ones, that is, not engaging at all. I suspect his battles with the media are a proxy for his battles with himself: art versus commerce. He notes the terrible questions journalists ask on press junkets: “Alan, what are the smells of Barcelona?”
He notes the offensive diary items. He suspects a female masseur is taking sexual pleasure from touching him in a professional capacity. Did she confuse him with Hans Gruber, or the Vicomte de Valmont? Many actors excel at playing who they are not — it’s the ecstasy of transgression. He is nothing like a villain, or a satyrmaniac: he was in a relationship with the same woman for almost 50 years.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe