Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941 – December 11, 2021) was an American author who wrote Gothic fiction, erotic literature, and Bible fiction. She is most famous for writing The Vampire Chronicles. She later made a movie based on the first book in the series, Interview with the Vampire (1994), which became very successful.

Anne Rice was born in New Orleans. She lived in the city during her childhood before moving to Texas and later to San Francisco. She was raised in a Catholic family but became an agnostic as an adult. She began her writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire (1976) while living in California. In the 1980s, she wrote follow-up books to the novel. In the mid-2000s, after publicly returning to Catholicism, she wrote two novels, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, which describe events in the life of Jesus. Later, she moved away from organized religion but continued to believe in Christianity personally. She eventually considered herself a secular humanist.

Her books have sold over 100 million copies, making her one of the most successful authors of modern times. Early reactions to her work were mixed, but critics began to praise her writing more in the 1980s. Her writing style and stories have been studied by literary experts. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years, from 1961 until his death from brain cancer in 2002 at age 60. She and Stan had two children: Michele, who died of leukemia at age five, and Christopher, who is also an author.

Anne Rice wrote other books, such as The Feast of All Saints (adapted into a television show in 2001) and Servant of the Bones, which inspired a 2011 comic book series. Many books from The Vampire Chronicles have been adapted into comics and manga. The American television network AMC made a critically praised series based on the first book in The Vampire Chronicles, first called Interview with the Vampire and later renamed The Vampire Lestat. She wrote erotic fiction using the names Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure, including Exit to Eden, which was adapted into a 1994 film.

Early life

Anne Rice was born on October 4, 1941, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was the second of four daughters in a family with Irish Catholic roots. Her father, Howard O'Brien, was born in 1917 and died in 1991. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and lived in New Orleans his entire life. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service and wrote a novel called The Impulsive Imp, which was published after his death. Her mother, Katherine "Kay" Allen O'Brien, was born in 1908 and died in 1956. Anne’s older sister, Alice Borchardt, later became a writer of fantasy and historical romance books.

Anne spent most of her childhood in New Orleans, a city that appears in many of her books. She and her family lived in a rented home owned by her maternal grandmother, Alice Allen, who was called "Mamma Allen." The house was at 2301 St. Charles Avenue, a highly valued area of the city. This street runs parallel to Magazine Street, the main road of the Irish Channel, a neighborhood Rice described as a "Catholic Ghetto," showing how New Orleans had areas with both wealthy and poor residents, as well as neighborhoods with different racial backgrounds.

Anne’s grandmother, Alice Allen, worked as a domestic helper after separating from her husband, who struggled with alcoholism. She helped keep the family together as Anne’s mother, Kay, dealt with alcoholism. Alice Allen died in 1949, but Anne’s family stayed in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former church building owned by the parish. This move brought them closer to the church and support for Kay’s addiction. As a child, Anne attended St. Alphonsus School, a Catholic school her father had also attended.

Anne’s full name at birth was Howard Allen Frances O'Brien. She chose to be called "Anne" when she started school, as a nun asked her name, and she said "Anne," which she liked. Her mother did not correct her, and from that day on, everyone called her "Anne." Her name was legally changed in 1947. At age 12, Anne was confirmed in the Catholic Church and took the full name Howard Allen Frances Alphonsus Liguori O'Brien, adding the names of a saint and her aunt, who was a nun. She said she was honored to have her aunt’s name but found it difficult to live with such unusual names.

When Anne was 15, her mother died from alcoholism. Soon after, Anne and her sisters were placed in St. Joseph Academy by their father. Anne described the school as "something out of Jane Eyre," a place she disliked and felt betrayed by her father for sending her there.

In November 1957, Anne’s father married Dorothy Van Bever. Rice recalled that her father wrote a formal letter inviting Dorothy to lunch, which Anne delivered. Dorothy wore a pin included in the letter if she accepted the invitation. In 1958, when Anne was 16, her father moved the family to north Texas, where they bought their first home in Richardson. Anne met her future husband, Stan Rice, in a journalism class at Richardson High School.

After graduating from Richardson High in 1959, Anne attended Texas Woman’s University for one year before transferring to North Texas State College. She left college after running out of money and could not find work. She moved to San Francisco and stayed with a friend’s family until she found a job as an insurance claims processor. She convinced her former roommate, Ginny Mathis, to join her, and they rented an apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district. Mathis also found a job at the same insurance company. They took night classes at the University of San Francisco, an all-male Jesuit school that allowed women to attend classes at night.

During Easter vacation, Anne returned to Texas and reconnected with Stan Rice. After returning to San Francisco, Stan visited her during the summer break. He returned to Texas, Anne moved back in with the Percys, and Mathis left San Francisco in August to start a nursing program in Oklahoma. Later, Stan sent Anne a letter asking her to marry him. They married on October 14, 1961, in Denton, Texas, when Anne was 20 and Stan was nearly 19.

The Rices moved back to San Francisco in 1962 and lived in the Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley, and later the Castro District during the rise of the hippie movement. Anne later told The New York Times that she was a "totally conservative person" and described herself as "square" in the 1960s while others around her used drugs. She attended San Francisco State University and earned a B.A. in political science in 1964. Their daughter, Michele, later nicknamed "Mouse," was born on September 21, 1966. Anne paused her graduate studies at San Francisco State University to pursue a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She later became unhappy with the focus on literary criticism and language requirements, saying she wanted to be a writer, not a literature student.

In 1970, Anne returned to San Francisco State University to complete her studies in creative writing and graduated with an M.A. in 1972. Stan Rice became an instructor at San Francisco State after earning his own M.A. in creative writing and later led the creative writing department before retiring in 1988. Michele was diagnosed with acute granulocytic leukemia in 1970, while Anne was still in graduate school. Anne later described having a dream months before Michele became ill that her daughter was dying from "something wrong with her blood." Michele died in 1972, shortly before her sixth birthday.

Anne’s son, Christopher, was born in Berkeley, California, in 1978. He became a successful author, publishing his first novel at age 22. Anne, who admitted to being an alcoholic, and her husband, Stan Rice, stopped drinking in mid-1979 to ensure their son would not face the same struggles she had as a child. In 2008, Anne posted a YouTube video to celebrate 28 years of sobriety.

Writing career

Anne Rice mentioned authors such as Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Milton, Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, and Stephen King as influences on her writing. She often used Stephen King’s novel Firestarter for inspiration: "I study the novel Firestarter whenever I'm stuck. Reading the first few pages of Firestarter helps me begin again."

In 1973, while still mourning the death of her daughter (1966–1972), Rice adapted a previously written short story into her first novel, the bestselling Interview with the Vampire. She based her vampires on Gloria Holden’s character in Dracula’s Daughter: "That character showed me what vampires were—elegant, tragic, and sensitive people. I followed that idea when writing Interview with the Vampire. I did not do much research." After finishing the novel and facing many rejections from publishers, Rice developed obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). She became extremely worried about germs, believing she contaminated everything she touched, and washed her hands often. She also repeatedly checked locks on windows and doors. Rice described this time: "When you are in that state, you notice every flaw in your hygiene and cannot control it, which makes you feel very confused."

In August 1974, after one year of therapy for her OCD, Rice attended the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference in Olympic Valley (formerly Squaw Valley), organized by writer Ray Nelson. At the conference, Rice met her future literary agent, Phyllis Seidel. In October 1974, Seidel sold the publishing rights to Interview with the Vampire to Alfred A. Knopf for a $12,000 advance for the hardcover edition, a much higher amount than most new authors received at the time. Interview with the Vampire was published in May 1976. In 1977, Rice and her husband traveled to Europe and Egypt for the first time.

After Interview with the Vampire was published, while living in California, Rice wrote two historical novels, The Feast of All Saints and Cry to Heaven, along with three erotic novels (The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty's Release) under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, and two more under the pseudonym Anne Rampling (Exit to Eden and Belinda). Rice then returned to the vampire genre with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, which became bestsellers and followed Interview with the Vampire.

Shortly after her June 1988 return to New Orleans, Rice wrote The Witching Hour to express her happiness about returning home. She also continued her Vampire Chronicles series, which later included ten novels. She followed The Witching Hour with Lasher and Taltos, completing the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. She also published Violin, a story about a ghostly haunting, in 1997. Rice appeared on an episode of The Real World: New Orleans that aired in 2000.

Rice began another series called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, published in 2005, which told the story of Jesus’ life. After moving to Rancho Mirage, California, in 2006, Rice wrote a second book in the series, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, published in March 2008, and was working on a third book, Christ the Lord: Kingdom of Heaven, in November 2008. She also wrote the first two books in her Songs of the Seraphim series, Angel Time and Of Love and Evil, and her memoir Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession.

On March 9, 2014, Rice announced on her son Christopher’s radio show, The Dinner Party with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn, that she had completed another book in the Vampire Chronicles series, titled Prince Lestat, which she called a "true sequel" to Queen of the Damned. The book was released on October 28, 2014. In 2015, a sequel to the Sleeping Beauty trilogy, Beauty's Kingdom, was published.

Reception and analysis

After its release in 1976, Interview with the Vampire received some positive and some negative reviews from critics, which led Anne Rice to take a break from writing supernatural stories for a time. When The Vampire Lestat was published in 1985, both critics and readers responded more positively. The first hardcover edition of the book sold 75,000 copies. In 1988, The Queen of the Damned was printed in an initial hardcover run of 405,000 copies. The novel was selected as a main book by the Literary Guild of America for 1988 and reached the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, remaining there for more than four months.

Many members of the LGBT+ community respect Rice’s novels, as some readers see her vampire characters as symbols of loneliness and being separated from society. A reviewer from The Boston Globe noted that Rice’s vampires represent "people who feel disconnected from others, whether by choice or not." Rice explained that she always had gay readers and friends, and that she lived in San Francisco’s Castro district, a well-known area for the LGBT+ community.

Rice’s work has greatly influenced vampire fiction. Susan Ferraro of The New York Times wrote that Rice changes traditional vampire stories by focusing on the vampire rather than the victim, making the horror come from the idea of the monster within oneself. Her vampires are also described as thoughtful and philosophical, often discussing ideas about good and evil.

Rice’s writing style has been widely studied. Ferraro described her prose as "rich and detailed, with both dramatic and poetic elements." However, some critics have pointed out that her writing can be too long, complicated, and unclear. William Patrick Day noted that her writing is "long, complex, and not always precise." Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described Rice’s style as "a mix of Gothic imagination and a love for the unusual and extravagant."

Personal life

In June 1988, after the success of The Vampire Lestat and with The Queen of the Damned about to be published, the Rices bought a second home in New Orleans called the Brevard–Rice House. The house was built in 1857 for Albert Hamilton Brevard. Stan Rice took time off from teaching, and the couple moved to New Orleans. Soon after, they decided to live there permanently.

In 1998, Rice returned to the Catholic Church after many years of not believing in any religion. On December 14, 1998, she fell into a coma caused by a health condition called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). She nearly died but later recovered. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which requires insulin treatment. After her husband’s death, Rice followed his advice and had stomach surgery in 2003. This helped her lose 103 pounds.

In 2004, Rice nearly died again from an intestinal blockage, a common problem after stomach surgery. In 2005, Newsweek reported that she had faced serious health challenges in 1998 and 2004. She also mentioned returning to the Catholic Church in 1998, though she did not fully agree with all of the Church’s views on social issues. She continued to support equal rights for gay men and lesbians, including marriage rights, and spoke out in favor of abortion and birth control.

While promoting her book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt in 2005, Rice told Newsweek that she wanted to use her writing to honor her belief in God. She did not stop supporting her earlier works, explaining that they were connected to her spiritual journey.

In the Author’s Note of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice wrote:
In her memoir Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, Rice stated:

In January 2004, Rice announced on her website that she planned to leave New Orleans. She said she was living alone since her husband’s death and her son had moved to California. She sold her largest home in New Orleans on January 30, 2004, and moved to a gated community in Kenner, Louisiana. She said her goal was to simplify her life by owning fewer things. She sold two homes in New York City in 2005 and left New Orleans in 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina in August. None of her former homes in New Orleans were damaged by the storm. She continued to support relief efforts for the city.

After leaving New Orleans, Rice moved to La Jolla, California, in 2005. She described the weather there as “like heaven.” She left La Jolla less than a year later, saying the weather was too cold. In late 2005, she bought a six-bedroom home in Rancho Mirage, California, to be closer to her son in Los Angeles.

In 2010, Rice sold her collection of antique dolls at an auction in Chicago. She also sold her clothing, jewelry, and other items from her books on eBay. She sold many of her books to Powell’s Books.

In July 2010, Rice wrote on Facebook that she was disappointed with how Christianity was practiced today. She later clarified her statement, saying she respected different religious groups but felt uncomfortable with the debates and conflicts within organized religion. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she said she felt more morally comfortable without being part of a church. She explained that she followed Christ by praying, trusting in God, and living by Jesus’ teachings. In 2010, she participated in a project called “I Am Second” with a short documentary about her spiritual journey. In 2013, she said she considered herself a secular humanist. In 2014, she wrote that Christ remained important in her life, but not in the way organized religion describes him.

In a later interview with Alice Cooper, she said:

Death

Rice passed away due to health problems caused by a stroke at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 11, 2021, at the age of 80. A statement from Rice's son, Christopher Rice, said the family planned to bury her in the family mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Rice was buried in January 2022. The Rice Family Mausoleum is also where Rice's husband, Stan Rice, and daughter, Michele, are buried. One side of the tomb has stained glass, while the other three sides are carved with poems from Stan Rice's books, "False Prophet" and "Some Lamb." The mausoleum is available for public visits during scheduled hours.

Adaptations

In 1994, the movie Exit to Eden was released. It was based on a book written by Anne Rice, who used the name Anne Rampling at the time. The film stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Aykroyd. The story was changed from a love story with themes of power and control into a comedy about police. The movie did not do well at the movies and received mostly negative reviews from critics.

Also in 1994, director Neil Jordan made a movie version of Interview with the Vampire, based on a screenplay written by Anne Rice. The film features Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as Louis, and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, who was in her first major acting role.

In 2002, a movie called Queen of the Damned was released. It was based on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles and combined parts of two of her books: The Queen of the Damned and The Vampire Lestat. The movie cost $35 million to make but only earned $30 million in the United States. Anne Rice said she was unhappy with how the film changed her story and called the changes “mutilating.”

In 2012, a movie adaptation of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt was being planned. Chris Columbus was involved in producing the film, and Cyrus Nowrasteh had already written the script. By 2016, the movie was finished and released under the title The Young Messiah.

In 2014, Universal Pictures bought the rights to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. However, in 2016, Universal did not renew the contract, and the rights returned to Anne Rice. She and her son, Christopher Rice, began working on a television series based on the books.

In 1997, Anne Rice wrote a television pilot called Rag and Bone, which mixed horror and crime themes. The pilot was written by James D. Parriott and aired on CBS, starring Dean Cain and Robert Patrick.

Another project, Earth Angels, was created by Anne Rice and produced by Imagine Television and 20th Century Fox. The story followed angels in human form fighting evil in New York City. Four parts of Rice’s story were published in a comic book called Anne Rice’s Tale of the Body Thief in 1999.

In 2001, a Showtime miniseries called The Feast of All Saints was made. It was directed by Peter Medak and starred James Earl Jones and Gloria Reuben. In 2002, NBC planned to adapt Lives of the Mayfair Witches into a miniseries, but the project was never made.

In 2016, Anne Rice announced on Facebook that she had regained the rights to her novels. She and her son began developing a television series based on The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches. In 2017, they partnered with Paramount Television and Anonymous Content. By 2018, Bryan Fuller was involved in the project, but he later left. In 2019, Hulu’s rights to the project ended, and Rice began looking for new partners. In 2020, AMC acquired the rights to develop films and television based on Rice’s works. A media franchise called The Immortal Universe was launched in 2022.

Several adaptations of Rice’s books have been made into television series:
– Interview with the Vampire (2022), created by Rolin Jones
– Mayfair Witches (2023), created by Michelle Ashford and Esta Spalding
– The Talamasca (2025)

In 2005, a musical called Lestat, based on Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, opened on Broadway. It was written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Despite Rice’s support, the show received poor reviews and closed after 39 performances. The cast recording was not released.

Many of Rice’s books have been adapted into comic books and manga, including:
– The Vampire Lestat (1990–1991)
– The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (1990–1992)
– The Queen of the Damned (1991)
– The Master of Rampling Gate (1991)
– The Vampire Companion (1991)
– Interview with the Vampire (1991–1994)
– The Witching Hour (1992–1993)
– Yoake No Vampire (1995)
– The Tale of the Body Thief (1999)
– Servant of the Bones (2011)
– Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story (2012)
– The Wolf Gift: The Graphic Novel (2014)

Anne Rice initially strongly opposed fan fiction based on her books, especially stories about The Vampire Chronicles. She asked FanFiction.Net to remove her stories. In 2012, she said she had changed her mind, explaining that she now believes fan fiction can be a way for young writers to learn.