Anne Rice, the legendary author perhaps best known for her Vampire Chronicles series, which includes her iconic novel Interview With the Vampire, died on Saturday. She was 80.
Her son Christopher Rice made the announcement via Rice's Facebook page. Rice stated that his mother "passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke." According to her son, Rice's passing comes "...almost nineteen years to the day [his] father, her husband Stan, died."
Rice was born in the fittingly haunting New Orleans, Louisiana on October 4, 1941. Her most famous series, The Vampire Chronicles, was published over the course of 42 years, beginning with Interview With the Vampire. The most recent addition to the series was Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat, published in 2018.
Interview With the Vampire was adapted into a film in 1994. The film starred Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. Several other films were adapted from this series, including the 2002 film Queen of the Damned, starring the late and legendary Aaliyah as Queen Akasha. Stuart Townsend played Lestat in the 2002 film. Anne Rice's work continues to live on, with a new Interview With the Vampire series coming to AMC+ in 2022 as well as a new series based around her Mayfair Witches books recently optioned by the network.
Rice wrote more than thirty books in her career, which spanned many decades. She was very active on her Facebook page, which she often used to interact with her large and avid fanbase.
Rice was married to the poet Stan Rice, who died in 2002. Together they had two children, a daughter, Michelle, who died at the age of 5 from leukemia, and a son, Christopher who, like his mother, is a horror writer.
"Let us take comfort in the shared hope that Anne is now experiencing firsthand the glorious answers to many great spiritual and cosmic questions, the quest for which defined her life and career," her son said via Facebook, noting that a public celebration of Rice's life will be held in New Orleans sometime next year.