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Original Film Poster

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Interview With the Vampire (1994) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

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Anne Rice's Reaction to Tom's Performance

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Anne Rice's Reaction to Tom's Performance

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Its an interesting behind the scenes fact that Anne Rice did not want Tom Cruise to play Lestat. It was only after watching the film for herself that she changed her tune, ultimately loving his performance!

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Here's why Interview With The Vampire author Anne Rice absolutely hated Tom Cruise's casting as Lestat - and how she felt after seeing the movie. Interview With The Vampire was published in 1976 and is framed as a story where a vampire recounts his eventful, tragic life to a reporter. The novel was something of a genre landmark and popularized the notion vampires could be lonely, introspective figures cursed by their immortality. The book was personal for the author too, with the character of Claudia - the five-year-old vampire child - based on Rice's own daughter, who passed away from leukemia.

Interview With The Vampire - which is getting a new series - was a bestseller, but its path to the big screen was a long one. It took nearly 20 years, and in between Rice had considered other options like making it a musical. The author had written various screenplays for this proposed adaptation herself and had just about given up on the notion of the film actually happening when the pieces finally fell into place. Irish director Neil Jordan - hot off The Crying Game - signed on after Rice's preferred choices like David Cronenberg and Ridley Scott passed, while Tom Cruise signed on as Lestat.

Related: Queen Of The Damned Cast: What They Look Like Now & Biggest Movies Since

Interview With The Vampire was Tom Cruise's first time playing a villain and was considered a risk for the actor. When penning the novel, Rice had pictured Rutger Hauer ( Blade Runner) as Lestat, and while she had dreamed of that casting for Lestat while the movie spent years in development hell, she admitted he was likely too old by the time Interview With The Vampire went into production. Daniel Day-Lewis considered the role, among other names, but Cruise eventually signed on and was excited about the challenge it represented. The only issue was fans of Interview With The Vampire felt he was horribly miscast - an opinion shared by Anne Rice.

Rice Hated Cruise's Interview Casting But Loved His Performance

According to an excellent article on the Tom Cruise Interview With The Vampire casting controversy, Rice attended a book signing attended by readers calling for a boycott against the star. Rice agreed with their complaints, claiming Cruise was totally wrong for the role and claimed he had ordered the more sexualized elements of the book be cut. She also stated she would have preferred his Interview With The Vampire's co-star Brad Pitt to play Lestat instead. Rice's vocal bashing of Cruise's Interview With The Vampire - which changed many book details - casting soon became public knowledge, with Cruise's himself admitting he was surprised by Rice's anger and that " her venom hurt."

Jordan and Interview With The Vampire co-producer David Geffen were also shocked by Rice's comments - with the latter stating the author's complaints were incredibly unprofessional and unfair to the filmmakers. Rice - who passed in 2021 - ended up loving Cruise's work, stating " I like to believe Tom's Lestat will be remembered the way Olivier's Hamlet is remembered. Others may play the role some day but no one will ever forget Tom's version of it." Interview With The Vampire was also a huge success, though Cruise's declined to reprise Lestat for the movie's ill-fated sequel Queen Of The Damned, where Irish actor Stuart Townsend played the vampire as a rock star.

Next: The Interview With The Vampire Series Is Making The Same Mistake Again

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Why Anne Rice Hated Tom Cruise's Interview With The Vampire Casting

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Anne Rice had many actors in mind for Interview With The Vampire, but Tom Cruise wasn't one of them; here's why she was initially against him.

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A father and daughter relationship that spawned from a moment of weakness as he fights to remain human within himself. Claudia has a profound significance to his story and character evolution to the less human version of himself.

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The glue that kept Louis around Lestat was Claudia. Lestat longed for a companion and Claudia bridged the gap between the two. Lestat has his hunting partner that is just as ruthless as himself while Louis gets to play dad, a role fit for humans. It's a symbol of a broken marriage that exists solely for the children.

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Roger Ebert seems to overall have enjoyed the film as well as praise the acting by these mega stars, as well as notes Cruise's performance on the brinks of controversy of his casting.

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The initial meeting between Louis and Lestat takes the form of a seduction; the vampire seems to be courting the younger man, and there is a strong element of homoeroticism in the way the neck is bared and the blood is engorged. Parallels between vampirism and sex, both gay and straight, are always there in all of Rice's novels; the good news is that you can indulge your lusts night after night, but the bad news is that if you stop, you die.

Tom Cruise, who initially seemed to many people an unlikely choice to play Lestat, is never less than convincing, and his slight British accent, combined with makeup that is dramatic without being obtrusive, disguises the clean-cut star - makes him seem unwholesome in an odd, insinuating way. Brad Pitt, whose role is probably larger, and who has been at home as the depraved hero of films like " Kalifornia," here seems more like an innocent, a young man who makes unwise choices, and lives (and lives, and lives) to regret them.

One of the creepier aspects of the story is the creation of the child vampire, Claudia, played by Kirsten Dunst, who is about 12 years old. The character was six in the novel, but even twice as old she is disturbing, trapped in her child's body as she ages, decade after decade. Dunst, perhaps with the help of Stan Winston's subtle makeup, is somehow able to convey the notion of great age inside apparent youth.

The movie's unique glory is in its look, created by cinematographer Phillipe Rousselot and production designer by Dante Ferretti. His credits include Scorsese's " The Age of Innocence" and Gilliam's " The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and here he combines the elegance of the former and the fantastic images of the latter into a vampire world of eerie beauty. The action of course largely takes place at night, in old Southern plantations and French Quarter dives, along gloomy back streets and in decadent boudoirs. The film truly takes flight after the action moves on board a transatlantic sailing ship, and then into the catacombs of Paris. There are scenes set in a vast underground columbarium, where the vampires sleep on shelves reaching up into the gloom, that is one of the great sets of movie history.

In Paris, Louis meets the vampires Armand ( Antonio Banderas) and Santiago ( Stephen Rea), and begins to understand he is a member of an international clandestine society. Vampires of course need regular supplies of fresh blood, and the details involving its procurement are dismaying to the creatures, who, to live, must constantly feed off the lives of others. Their sadness is manifest in Rice's screenplay and the moody direction by Neil Jordan (" The Crying Game"). Both Rice and Jordan take this subject, with its abundant possibilities for looking ridiculous, and play it as tragedy.

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Interview with the Vampire movie review (1994) | Roger Ebert

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Although one of the characters in "Interview with the Vampire" begs to be transformed into a vampire, and eagerly awaits the doom of immortality, the movie never makes vampirism look like anything but an endless sadness. That is its greatest strength. Vampires throughout movie history have often chortled as if they'd gotten away with something.

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an online copy of Anne Rice's book that inspired the film and her first attempt to adapt to screenplay.

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a copy of the script used for the film.

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Louis de Pointe Du Lac Character analysis

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Louis de Pointe Du Lac Character analysis

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Character analysis of Louis, who is my central focus of my project

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The one person that keeps Louis human still.

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The actual central character to the Vampire Chronicles that has a certain charm of being misunderstood.

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Differences Between the Film adaptation and Book

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Differences Between the Film adaptation and Book

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most notable differences between the film and book.

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The 1994 American gothic horror movie Interview with the Vampire made many changes to Anne Rice's 1976 novel of the same name. The movie stars Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt and Brad Pitt as Louis de Pointe du Lac. Lestat transforms Louis into a vampire in the beginning of the story. The movie details their time together, and their turning of the young Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) into a fellow vampire. From there, it follows Louis and Claudia as they take off on their own. The entire tragic narrative is told via a present-day interview, with Louis telling the story to a San Francisco reporter, Daniel Molloy ( Christian Slater).

While Rice's novel received mixed reviews upon its publication, the movie version of the vampire story was overall acclaimed by critics upon its release. The movie was also a success commercially. It was nominated for two Oscars-Best Art Direction and Best Original Score-and Dunst was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

Related: Why Vampire Movies & TV Shows Stopped Being So Popular

Paramount Pictures had originally purchased the rights to the 1976 novel by Anne Rice shortly before it was published. The script, though, remained in limbo for several years. Eventually, the rights were sold to Lorimar-and then Warner Bros. acquired them. Neil Jordan was approached to direct the movie, following his success with The Crying Game in 1992. He was a fan of the book and ended up writing his own script, without credit. Though the movie was an international hit and mostly faithful to the book-even liked by Rice herself-it did occasionally stray from its source material. Here are the biggest changes the movie made to Rice's novel.

Why Louis Was Turned

The first way the movie deviates from the book can be spotted early on. In the beginning of the movie, Louis-who is described to be a Spanish lord, though in the book he is actually French-is distraught by the death of his wife and daughter. In his grief, Lestat finds him and ask if he would like to be turned into a vampire. Louis agrees, and is turned. In the book, the reasons for Louis's grief is different-it's his brother Paul's passing that leaves him bereft and vulnerable.

Claudia

Claudia is an important part of the story, and her words and actions end up greatly affecting the plot of Interview with the Vampire. In the book, Claudia is only five years old when Lestat changes her into a vampire, and is stuck in that small form for eternity. In the movie, though, she is ten, and is played by an 11-year-old Dunst.

In the movie, Lestat feeds off of Claudia, who is ridden with the plague, and turns her into a vampire. He does this as a way to lure Louis into staying by his side. It works, and the two vampires raise Claudia together. In the book, though, Louis is the one who feeds off of Claudia. Days later, Lestat seeks her out, locates her at an orphanage, and brings her to Louis. In front of Louis, Lestat ends up turning her into a vampire, enticing Louis into staying with him.

Related: Every Major Movie Role Brad Pitt Turned Down

Armand's Role

As Interview with the Vampire goes on, Louis and Claudia abandon Lestat-believing they killed him- and travel to Paris to live. They meet other vampires. Among them is Armand ( Antonio Banderas), the leader of a coven. In the book, Louis has great love for Armand. Things are different in the movie; Louis is captivated by Armand, but his feelings are portrayed as friendship rather than more romantic love.

Armand, overall, has a much bigger role in the book than he does in the movie. He and Louis have an intense relationship that spans decades, and he helps guide Louis in the philosophy of being a vampire. In the movie, he has a smaller role and doesn't get much screen time.

Louis and Lestat's Relationship

Louis feels great hatred for Lestat from the very beginning of the book. Louis and Lestat even go through long periods of not speaking to one another. Louis feels anger for letting Lestat turn him into a vampire, and harbors a lot of resentment as he waits out eternity. In the movie, though, their relationship is portrayed as less strained, and as more of a brotherhood that has its ups and downs-though, of course, the downs are a larger focus for dramatic emphasis.

Lestat's Personality

In Rice's book, Lestat has varying character traits, but key among them is cruelty. He's shown to have become hardened over his time as a vampire, and acts out in cold ways. For instance, he ignores his elderly father and often acts viciously to Louis, forcing him into uncomfortable situations. Lestat is also extremely jealous over Louis's fatherly love for Claudia. Though the movie does portray Lestat as cruel, it does so to a lesser degree. Cruise plays Lestat in a way that's more playful, and sometimes even childlike; viewers ultimately feel compassion for him. The reason for this may be because the movie didn't portray Lestat and Louis's full relationship as it was in the book.

Related: Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Interview With A Vampire's Ending

In the movie, following the climax where Claudia is killed, Louis ends up exploring the world on his own over many decades. Eventually, he returns to New Orleans and happens to come across Lestat, a recluse living off of rat blood. Louis refuses to rejoin him. After this, present-day Louis finishes the interview. The reporter, Daniel, suggests he could become Louis's new companion. Louis becomes outraged, in disbelief that Molloy has not comprehended the suffering it takes to live as a vampire. Louis leaves, and Molloy gets into his own car; Lestat appears on the Golden Gate Bridge and attacks him, drinking his blood, and asks him if he wants to become a vampire.

That ending was added to for the movie version in order to make it more dramatic. In the book, things happen differently. Louis ends up traveling the world with Armand, not by himself. Armand learns that Lestat is still alive; he tells Louis in the hopes that it will give Louis a spark of life, since he has been depressed since Claudia's death. So, Louis returns to New Orleans to find Lestat. When he does, Lestat is extremely frail, and about to feed on a baby that a younger vampire brings him. Louis and Lestat have an emotional reunion, with Louis ultimately leaving. After this, Louis and Armand part ways.

In terms of the movie's ending in Interview with the Vampire, Louis turning down Daniel's request to become a vampire is faithful to the book. In the book, though, Louis ends up drinking blood from Daniel, even leaving him alone to potentially die. When Daniel awakens-not dead-he is completely obsessed with the idea of becoming a vampire. He goes to New Orleans to find Lestat, in the hopes that he will turn him, but cannot locate him.

Next: Interview With The Vampire: What Happened To Lestat After The Movie

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Interview With The Vampire: The Movie's Biggest Changes To The Book

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The 1994 American gothic horror movie occasionally strays from its source material, the 1976 vampire novel of the same name by Anne Rice.

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Interview with the Vampire: Soundtrack list

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Interview with the Vampire: Soundtrack list

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Full soundtrack playlist

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Interview With A Vampire Complete Soundtrack Score (1994)

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Music Composed By Elliot Goldenthal Interview With A Vampire Complete Score (1994) I don't own this track / all material in this video. And All rights go to ...

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Actor's reactions to filming conditions and controversy

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Actor's reactions to filming conditions and controversy

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Although Tom Cruise had to overcome feelings of disdain of his casting, the overall filming experience was good for him. Brad Pitt found the process miserable and grueling with six months of filming at night in New Orleans and London.

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Armand is featured in more than one of Rice's books, but as he plays a short role in the film, he is the first vampire that Louis trusts ever since he turned. He feels a special connection with Armand, who's brutal betrayal sends Louis on a murderous rampage.

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This article is about Armand from the novel or film. You may be looking for from the AMC adaptation.

Armand

Given the name Andrei by his parents in his birthland, then named Amadeo when found by his maker Marius de Romanus, he then became known as he is now as Armand. He appears to be a youth of 17, quite beautiful and often referred to as angelic with the face of a cherub. By the time of the events of The Queen of the Damned, he is over 500 years old.
"And there I saw beauty, beauty which has always been my downfall, beauty in a new and celestial form. Heaven had cast down upon this stone floor an abandoned angel, of auburn curls and perfectly formed limbs, of fair and mysterious face. His soft reddish hair was loose and tangled. His flesh was pale and the bones of his face only faintly sharpened by his Slavic blood."

"This was a boy, as I had said, and he had a head of long curly hair. But his face was shining white, and perfect, the countenance of a god it seemed, a Cupid out of Caravaggio, seductive yet ethereal, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes."

- Marius from Blood and Gold

Armand's personality is that of a typical teenage boy, though more refined. He seems, like many of the vampires, to have a preoccupation with existential issues such as the meaning of life and what being a vampire means within such ponderings. Armand, however, is unique in that he swings from periods of hedonistic denial of a higher power to bouts of zealotry, devoting himself to the dogma of the Parisian coven and later throwing himself into the sun after seeing Veronica's Veil.

Armand in many ways has never matured from the teenager he was when he was turned. He is still prone to impulsive and extreme acts, often described as seeming "lost" when his actions spiral into events beyond his control.

Born in Kyiv, in what is now Ukraine in the year 1480, Armand, then known as Andrei, was a talented young boy who could paint wondrous images of ikons, which his father boasts as "not made by human hands". Andrei himself believes it is through the power of the Christian God that he is able to paint the wondrous ikons and takes no credit for himself. Andrei and his father were transporting an ikon as an offering when they were surprised and attacked by Tartars. Andrei is kidnapped and is taken by ship to be sold into slavery in Italy. Andrei arrives in Venice and is taken to a brothel where he refuses to do anything the men ask him to do. The men beat Andrei and abandon him to his death in the basement with no memory of who he is.

He is found and rescued by Marius de Romanus who immediately gives him the name Amadeo, believing the name's meaning "Beloved of God", appropriately suits him. He purchases Amadeo from the brothel and nurses him back to health at his home, where he receives an education among the many other boys Marius has rescued. Though he was a talented painter, during his education Amadeo refuses to paint again, though he cannot fully remember the reason why. As part of what Marius believes to be the education of the ways of being human, Marius regularly sends Amadeo to brothels to be serviced by women and men. During his time spent with Marius, Amadeo notices odd things about his master, however, he is more than willing to ignore them, as he is happy in his new life. Amadeo rapidly picks up the language and proves to be a brilliant student. Amadeo later meets Bianca Solderini, a friend and neighbor of his master. Amadeo spends much of his time at Bianca's parties and in her home and occasionally in her bed. Amadeo is eventually shown the nature of what his master truly is but feels no revulsion and still carries on loving his master regardless.

When Amadeo is seventeen years old, he angers Lord Harlech, an Englishman who claims to be madly in love with him. He attacks Amadeo in his home. Lord Harlech himself is killed, but leaves Amadeo mortally wounded by his poisoned blade. He is taken to Marius' room and looked after by Bianca until Marius arrives. Marius finds Amadeo slipping away. Amadeo believes he is seeing a vision of heaven. Fearing he'll lose Amadeo forever, Marius feels has no choice but to give Amadeo the Dark Gift, turning him into a vampire.

Life As a vampire

Now no longer a mortal, Marius teaches Amadeo how to live as a vampire and only to hunt evil doers which Amadeo gladly does while he remains in the company of his master. Amadeo's happiness with Marius is short-lived as his home is soon attacked by Santino and his coven of vampires who take Amadeo away from Marius and hold him prisoner. Believing Marius to be dead, Amadeo joins the vampires who kidnapped him and begins to follow their rules and beliefs. Santino plays a large part in convincing Amadeo that vampires are completely evil beings that should not be allowed to live as mortals do. Amadeo is then renamed Armand and is sent to rule over a coven in Paris which resides underneath a cemetery. Armand leads the coven and makes sure they follow these rules until Lestat and Gabrielle manage to persuade the entire coven that Armand's beliefs are ridiculous and petty.

Armand realizes that the coven can no longer survive as it did before so kills the majority of the vampires in it. He then appeals to Lestat and Gabrielle to stay with him and teach him how to live in this world. They refuse to stay with Armand but put him in charge of the Théâtre des Vampires.

Armand stays in the Theater in Paris until Louis and Claudia arrive. Armand, who wanted Louis for himself, influences Louis to make a Claudia a mother by turning Madeleine into a vampire thus freeing Louis from any obligations he may have had to care for Claudia. Soon Lestat arrives seeking help from Armand which he refuses to give and forces the weakened Lestat to testify that it was Claudia who attacked him and tried to kill him. This testimony gives the vampires reason enough to kill Claudia as killing another vampire is forbidden. Once Armand has finished with Lestat he pushes him from the top of the building, leaving Lestat seriously wounded.

Armand then leaves Paris with Louis to travel the world together until Armand realizes Louis has been changed by Claudia's death and will never recover. Armand then leaves Louis after making sure he has everything he needs to survive.

Armand then comes across the reporter Daniel Molloy who recorded Louis' story in Interview with the Vampire. Armand decides to let Daniel live and lets him go, only to follow Daniel wherever he goes in the world and question Daniel on everything, trying to understand men and the new century they live in. Armand soon falls in love with Daniel but refuses to make him into a vampire numerous times. He buys Daniel the "Night Island" and Daniel teaches Armand about modern day technology, which Armand becomes obsessed with. Daniel, frustrated that Armand keeps refusing to make him a vampire, starts running away on a regular basis only to be brought back by Armand who takes care of him.

Daniel is eventually made a vampire by Armand who doesn't want to lose Daniel and together they both go to the concert of "The Vampire Lestat". Here they witness the deaths of several vampires who are killed by an unseen force. They go together to hear the story of Maharet and Akasha and how vampires first came into being. Armand is also reunited with Marius very briefly at this meeting. When Akasha is destroyed and Lestat is safe, all the vampires travel to Night Island where they all enjoy each others company for a short time. Eventually everyone leaves Night Island and Armand and Daniel separate.

The next time Armand is mentioned is when Lestat returns with Memnoch who he claims was the devil who showed him heaven and hell. Armand, believing completely in all that Lestat says, tries to kill himself by walking into the sunlight in the name of God. Armand's suicide attempt was unsuccessful, leaving himself seriously injured and burnt. He reads the minds of the people in houses around him and kills the brother of Sybelle to save her from him and also to try and get his own strength back. Sybelle and her young companion Benji, both mortals, are thankful for what Armand has done and don't seem to care what he is or how he looks, and offer to help him regain his strength by bringing him people to kill, which they do until he has the strength to go out and find victims for himself.

When Armand is almost completely recovered, he takes Benji and Sybelle to where Lestat is resting in a chapel unconscious, surrounded by the other vampires. He leaves them both with Marius to take care of, sure that they will come to no harm with him. Armand wants to drink the blood of Lestat to know what it is Lestat saw while with Memnoch, and against Gabrielle's warnings, he does, and is thrown away by an invisible force.

Armand returns to Marius and finds that Sybelle and Benji have been turned into vampires, as a gift from Marius which he is very unhappy about. Regardless, he shows Sybelle and Benji unwavering love and confronts Marius about his actions while they are preoccupied. He claims that Marius changed them as an act of spite because Armand could not be the fledgling Marius wanted him to be. Armand argues that he wanted them to live their lives, and Marius robbed them of that. However, after a long debate and time to think, Armand accepts what has been done to his saviors and embraces taking them under his wing. Armand is also present when Lestat is awakened by Sybelle's piano playing.

The last appearance of Armand was when he was called by Maharet because Marius wanted revenge on Santino which Armand didn't seem to understand. After Santino's death. Armand appears again in Prince Lestat, and in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.

Interview with the Vampire (film)

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Given the name Andrei by his parents in his birthland, then named Amadeo when found by his maker Marius de Romanus, he then became known as he is now as Armand. He appears to be a youth of 17, quite beautiful and often referred to as angelic with the face of a cherub.

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The saddest reality of Anne Rice's inspiration behind the book was grieving the loss of her five-year-old daughter. Claudia is inspired by Michelle, who passed away at the age of 5 from Leukemia.

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Forty-five years after its publication, Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview With the Vampire stands as one of the most influential bloodsucker tales ever published-second only, perhaps, to Bram Stoker's . Rice's debut novel is almost single-handedly responsible for the image of vampires that dominates pop culture today: conflicted, brooding, and oozing sex appeal from every moonlit pore. There had been angsty, romantic vampires before, but even Barnabas Collins seemed like a relic from another time. Rice gave Nosferatu a modern makeover, imagining vampires as literal rock stars.

But the influence of Rice's novel doesn't stop at setting the stage for vampire yarns like The Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and . LGBTQ+ readers embraced the book for its queer subtext (which just became, well, text in later series installments) and its depiction of vampires as outsiders feared by mainstream society. It also became a seminal work for the burgeoning goth subculture; Liisa Ladouceur, author of 2011's Encyclopedia Gothica, calls Interview With the Vampire "a goth bible of sorts." The novel kicked off a decades-spanning, 13-book series, inspired a hit film and multiple comic book adaptations, and established the template for a popular vampire trope.

With vampire fiction back on the rise and a new television adaptation in the works, here are 11 things you might not know about Interview With the Vampire.

In August 1972, the author and her husband lost their 5-year-old daughter, Michele, to a rare form of leukemia. The following year, Rice, who had recently completed a master's degree in creative writing, quit her job to focus on writing. "I pitched myself into writing and made up a story about vampires," Rice told The Independent in 2014. "I didn't know it at the time but it was all about my daughter, the loss of her and the need to go on living when faith is shattered."

Rice first explored the idea of a reporter interviewing a vampire with a short story called "Interview with the Vampire," which she revised several times. After her daughter's death, she pulled the story out again, and over the course of five weeks in 1973, expanded it into a full-length novel.

Rice saw Dracula's Daughter when she was a kid and was captivated by its portrayal of the title character as a tormented artist who longed to be human. "It established to me what vampires were-these elegant, tragic, sensitive people," Rice said in a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast. "I was really just going with that feeling when writing Interview With the Vampire."

In fact, she hadn't even read Stoker's seminal vampire novel when she wrote Interview With the Vampire.

When Rice named the character who would go on to star in the 1985 sequel The Vampire Lestat and headline the rest of the Vampire Chronicles series, she was misremembering a common Creole name. "I actually thought I was using an old Louisiana name," Rice said in a 2014 interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival. "But I was misspelling it; the old name is 'Lestan.'" It was several years before she realized her error.

Rice submitted her novel to several agents and editors in 1973, but there were no takers. The following year, she attended a Squaw Valley writers conference where, according to The New York Times, staffers read her manuscript and got excited enough to talk it up to Knopf editor Victoria Wilson, who was also in attendance. Rice landed an agent at the conference, and that agent happened to be a friend of Wilson's. Wilson loved the manuscript, and before the year was over, Knopf had picked up hardcover rights to Interview With the Vampire, paying Rice a reported $12,000 advance- considerably more than most debut novelists were being paid at the time, according to Rice.

Rice's $12,000 advance was nothing compared to what lay in store for her in the months leading up to her novel's publication. First, the Literary Guild mail-order book club paid $7500 to add the book to its selections; then, things got serious when Paramount optioned the film rights for $150,000. With paperback rights still on the table, other publishing houses were scrambling to find Xeroxed copies of the manuscript, and after several rounds of bidding, Ballantine scored paperback rights to Interview With the Vampire for a whopping $700,000 (the equivalent of more than $3 million in today's market). For comparison, Stephen King's now-legendary paperback rights sale for Carrie netted him $400,000 just three years earlier.

According to Rice's website, the book changed dramatically between the initial sale in 1974 and its publication in 1976. Her editor thought the novel "peter[ed] out" toward the end, and asked Rice to rework it-so Rice wrote an additional 200 pages. The entire sequence involving the Theatre of the Vampires was added during the rewrite, as was the return of Lestat; in the original version, the flamboyant vampire died in the fire set by his protégé, Louis. In what Rice describes as "a very amicable process," she worked with her editor to whittle the manuscript down to the version that would eventually be published.

The publishing process is a notoriously lengthy one that involves several stages of editing, including substantive edits that address issues such as plot, character, and structure, as well as copy edits, which pertain to things like grammar and sentence structure. Rice was fine with the upper-level edits she received on Interview With the Vampire, including the aforementioned rewrite. But she took umbrage at the copy edits that would have, in her view, dramatically altered the book's tone and style. In a process she has described as "harrowing," Rice went through the extensive copy edits with an ink pen and "changed them all back."

In an oft-repeated bit of Interview With the Vampire lore, Rice supposedly named the Dutch actor as the inspiration for Lestat, who played a supporting role in Interview With the Vampire but has since become the star of the ongoing Vampire Chronicles series. But while Hauer certainly entered Rice's mind during Interview With the Vampire's lengthy trek to the big screen, the character was not based on him. "I didn't encounter [Hauer] till after I'd written Interview With the Vampire in which Lestat sprang to life pretty much on his own," Rice wrote in a 2015 Facebook post accompanied by a photo of the actor from the 1973 film Turkish Delight. "But this is surely how I see my beloved Brat Prince hero."

Fans who were disappointed by Neil Jordan's famously troubled 1994 film adaptation should take heart; Interview With the Vampire is being resurrected as a TV series that will hopefully kick off a flurry of new Anne Rice adaptations. AMC, which acquired the rights to 18 of Rice's novels in 2020, has ordered eight episodes of an Interview With the Vampire TV series that will star Game of Thrones's Jacob Anderson as Louis and Australian actor Sam Reid as Lestat. According to the Hollywood Reporter, AMC plans to premiere the series in 2022 as an effort to "launch a franchise universe based on Rice's novels." The network is also developing a series based on Rice's Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy.

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11 Facts About Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire

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Forty-five years after its publication, Anne Rice's 1976 novel 'Interview With the Vampire' stands as one of the most influential bloodsucker tales ever published. Here's what you need to know.

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Louis struggles with adjusting to his new life as a vampire and navigating how to function openly in society. Lestat is trying to teach him how to control his hunger and indulge in the blood of the aristocrats around them.

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With similar lusts for the hunt and often indulging in feeding on whole families together, Lestat and Claudia struggle to connect beyond their vampirism, causing tension and defiance as time goes on.

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In order to punish Lestat, Claudia has come up with a plan for payback. This demonstrates that despite the years passing she lacks the rationality of a mature adult with her highly consequential and impulsive scheme to rid them of Lestat.

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Armand is introduced to Louis's companion, Claudia, and his infatuation with Louis and need to have him for himself leads to the demise of our beloved Claudia.

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The leader of a coven in Paris and main performer in his out in the open "act" of feeding through the guise of theater. This daring choice gives a hidden essence of distrust one should have for Armand. In the short time we see Armand in the film, he uses his abilities to gain Louis's trust. Armand is a calculating and manipulative vampire that seeks to get what he wants, no matter the cost. In the end, his ambitions and lust for Louis cause the loss of Claudia and the death of his entire coven.

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Claudia meets her fate as punishment for Lestat along with her new companion, Madeleine

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The site of Claudia as ash was the final nail in the coffin of Louis's humanity as he sets fire to all the coffins and vampires in the coven to mark his revenge for her death.

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Claudia guilts Louis into gifting her with a companion, as she senses he is tempted to leave her behind for Armand, knowing he has hard feelings toward her for what she did to Lestat. It is in this moment that Louis tells her that they are even for turning her years prior, since this act has made him sacrifice what was left in him that was human. Claudia sees this as the payment of forgiveness, something she has struggled with because of her love for Louis and co-dependency of him to feel safe.