'Interview with a Vampire' author Anne Rice passes away at 80

Influential author, Anne Rice, whose popular books include Interview With a Vampire, and The Vampire Chronicles, breathed her last on Saturday surrounded by her family. The influential author passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke. She was 80. 

Her son, Christopher Rice, revealed the news first on her public Facebook page and reposted it on his verified Twitter handle. He stated that she would be interred in the family mausoleum at Metairie Cemetry in New Orleans in a private ceremony. 

Influential author Anne Rice dies at 80

Taking to the micro-blogging site, Christopher Rice posted a screengrab of Anne's Facebook post revealing the cause of her death. He tweeted, "Earlier tonight, my mother, Anne Rice, passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke. She left us almost nineteen years to the day my father, her husband Stan, died. Below is a statement I posted to her Facebook page moments ago."

More on Anne Rice's prominent work

Anne Rice was born in New Orleans in the year 1941. She was known as an author of gothic fiction and her books are sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. In the early 1970s, while grieving the death of her daughter Michelle, Rice began converting one of her stories into her first novel that is the gothic horror, Interview with the Vampire. The novel was published by Knopf in 1976. The novel turns on vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, who tells the plot of his life to a reporter. Michelle served as an inspiration for the child vampire, Claudia. 

The gothic horror book was the first of ten in what is collectively called The Vampire Chronicles. The book was adapted by Neil Jordan for a film that was released in 1994 starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and Christian Slater, with Kirsten Dunst playing Claudia. The author adapted the screenplay from her novel and the film bagged two Oscar nominations and a brace of BAFTA wins. 

Queen of the Damned, which is based on one of her bestselling sequels to Interview with the Vampire was adapted as a film in 2002. Other adaptations of Anne Rice's novels are Garry Marshall’s Exit to Eden (1994), starring Dana Delany, Dan Aykroyd, and Rosie O’Donnell, and Emmy-winning Showtime original The Feast of All Saints (2001). 

Earlier this month, AMC ordered a series based on Rice's Lives of the Mayfair Witches. According to Variety, AMC had acquired rights to Lives of the Mayfair Witches and The Vampire Chronicles in 2020. Its casting was recently finalised on the latter. 

(Image: AP)