The American writer who disappeared at the age of 80. From his novel the film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt
The “vampire lady” left surrounded by family. Cult author of horror fiction, famous for her “Vampire Chronicles” and the “Cycle of the Mayfair Witches”, the American writer Anne Rice died on Saturday at the age of 80 for complications resulting from a stroke. This was announced by his son Christopher Rice (himself a writer) on Facebook and Twitter: “She left us 19 years after her husband,” the poet Stan Rice, killed by cancer in 2002.
It was the first novel, Interview with the vampire, published in 1976 and initially welcomed by negative criticisms, to project Anne Rice towards a success that would have made her sell, with about thirty books, about 150 million copies worldwide. He wrote it straight away after his daughter Michelle died of leukemia at the age of five in 1972. A novel that revolves around the theme of the damnation of blood, which paved the way for the neo-Gothic vein. A story of vampires “told from the point of view of vampires and not the victims”, which gave new life to nineteenth-century atmospheres and images and decades later would be followed by titles such as Twilight e The Vampire Diaries.
Born in New Orleans in 1941 from a Catholic family of Irish origins, Anne Rice (real name Howard Allen Frances O’Brien) at the age of 15 was orphaned of a mother, a victim of alcoholism. In her debut years she lived in California, after a spell in Texas, where she had moved as soon as she came of age. In 1961 she married Stan Rice, who inspired her most famous character, iThe vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Who on the big screen, in the film directed in 1994 by Neil Jordan, had the face of Tom Cruise, despite the criticism of the writer, also author of the screenplay. For that role, Anne Rice – she said without too much trouble – would have preferred actors such as Julian Sands, John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons … unless she changed her mind at the end of the film. Next to Cruise was there Brad Pitt, face of Louis of Pointe du Lac, a young landowner from Louisiana who, in the novel as in the film, tells a journalist (Christian Slater, who took the place of River Phoenix who died shortly before filming began) his bicentennial existence, marked by his meeting with Lestat, who in 1791 transformed him into a vampire. And the then twelve year old Kirsten Dunst, in the role of Claudia, vampirized as a child, to whom Anne Rice entrusted the memory of her lost daughter in the novel.
After that first book, Anne Rice signed two historical novels and a series of erotic books under pseudonyms. Shooting the cycle of the “Vampire Chronicles”, who consecrated it and made it an idol among the “adepts” of Gothic culture, only in the Eighties with the bestsellers Chosen by the darkness (1985, narrated from the point of view of Lestat de Lioncourt) e The queen of the damned (1988), which was followed by ten other volumes: the last (unpublished in Italy where Rice’s novels are published by Tea and Longanesi) released in 2018: Blood Communion.
Over the years Anne Rice has transcended genres and also dealt with other horror / gothic archetypes like witches, mummies and werewolves.
The books followed the evolution of his troubled relationship with the Catholic religion. After years of atheism, the conversion in 1998 (after a coma) it was a shock to the fans of his characters, atheists tormented by free sexuality. This was followed by the decision to abandon vampires and witches to devote himself to historical-religious novels.
Then in 2010, from his very popular Facebook page, the announcement of the break with Catholic institutions, for the positions on morals and civil rights.
In the post published yesterday by her son, we read that Anne Rice will be buried in the family mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans in a private ceremony. But next year there will be a public tribute, open to «friends, readers and fans, who have given her so much joy and inspiration».
Meanwhile, the Amc network (home of Breaking Bad e The Walking Dead) ha in construction site two TV series, taken from Interview with the vampire and the Mayfair Witch Trilogy. Anne Rice’s immortal characters thus continue to live on on the small screen.
December 12, 2021 (change December 12, 2021 | 21:16)
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