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Juliet Stevenson has reflected on her close friendship with the late actor Alan Rickman, describing him as a “complicated person” whom she compared to a “big brother”.
Stevenson and Rickman were both nominated for Baftas for their performances in Truly, Madly, Deeply, the 1990 British fantasy drama about an interpreter mourning the death of her boyfriend.
Rickman died in January 2016, aged 69, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He left behind a legacy as one of Britain’s finest actors, with roles in films such as the period drama Sense and Sensibility, the action film Die Hard, Dogma, Richard Curtis’s rom-com Love Actually, and the Harry Potter franchise.
Speaking to The Observer, Stevenson revealed that she hadn’t read her former co-star’s diaries, which were published posthumously and included his intimate thoughts on his film and television colleagues, his friends, and how seriously he took his own work.
“I don’t know whether he wanted them published, but I just didn’t want to be involved in that world,” Stevenson said.
“I know what my relationship with him was like,” she continued. “He was a complicated person, but like a big brother – he just picked me up and kind of looked after me, bossed me around, gave me notes endlessly, and taught me a huge amount.”
In a 2022 interview, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said it was “lovely and nostalgic” to read what Rickman had written about him in his diaries, which he kept from 1972.
“All the stuff that Alan wrote, it was very lovely and nostalgic reading his comments about us, being like, ‘These kids need to learn their lines, that’s kind of a nightmare right now’, all of that stuff,” Radcliffe said.
“[It went] through to us meeting when I was over here doing a play and we met. It was very sweet to read all of that.”
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The news of Rickman’s death prompted a flood of tributes from other former co-stars, friends and admirers. His Sense & Sensibility co-star Kate Winslet remembered him as “warm and generous” in her speech at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards, while Colin Firth, with whom Rickman starred in Love Actually, as well as the 2012 heist comedy Gambit.
Stevenson next stars in Reawakening, opposite Jared Harris and Erin Doherty. Directed by Virginia Gilbert, the film follows a couple forced to relive old tensions when their daughter reappears, years after vanishing as a teenager.
The film is released in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 September.
