Allen died in 1949, but the O'Briens remained in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former rectory, convent, and school owned by the parish, to be closer to both the church and support for Katherine's addiction.

[11] On the subject of the couple's first meeting, Rice recalled, "My father wrote her a formal letter inviting her to lunch which I hand-delivered to her house ...

[32] "I'm a totally conservative person", she later told The New York Times: "In the middle of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass.

[34] Their daughter Michele, later nicknamed "Mouse", was born to the couple on September 21, 1966, and Rice later interrupted her graduate studies at SFSU to become a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.

[37][38] Rice's son Christopher was born in Berkeley, California, in 1978;[39] he has become a best-selling author in his own right, publishing his first novel at the age of 22.

[8] Rice cited Charles Dickens,[42] Virginia Woolf,[43] John Milton,[42] Ernest Hemingway,[43] William Shakespeare,[43] the Brontë sisters,[42] Jean-Paul Sartre,[16] Henry James,[24] Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard,[44] and Stephen King[45] as influences on her work.

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.

[57] Following its debut in 1976, Interview with the Vampire received mixed reviews from critics at this time, causing Rice to retreat temporarily from the supernatural genre.

[24] Rice's novels are well regarded by many members of the LGBT+ community, some of whom have perceived her vampire characters as allegorical symbols of isolation and social alienation.

[24] Similarly, a reviewer writing for The Boston Globe, observed that the vampires of her novels represent "the walking alienated, those of us who, by choice or not, dwell on the fringe".

[61] The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote: "Anne Rice has what might best be described as a Gothic imagination crossed with a campy taste for the decadent and the bizarre.

"[62] In June 1988, following the success of The Vampire Lestat and with The Queen of the Damned about to be published, the Rices purchased a second home in New Orleans, the Brevard–Rice House, built in 1857 for Albert Hamilton Brevard.

[69] In the Author's Note from Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice states: I had experienced an old-fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s … we attended daily Mass and Communion in an enormous and magnificently decorated church.

… Stained-glass windows, the Latin Mass, the detailed answers to complex questions on good and evil—these things were imprinted on my soul forever.

… I wanted to know what was happening, why so many seemingly good people didn't believe in any organized religion yet cared passionately about their behavior and value of their lives....

[72]In her memoir Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, Rice stated: In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from [God] for countless years.

[81] She purchased a six-bedroom home in Rancho Mirage, California in late 2005 and moved there in 2006, allowing her to be closer to her son in Los Angeles.

My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me.

[60][90] In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Rice elaborated on her view regarding being a member of a Christian church: "I feel much more morally comfortable walking away from organized religion.

I write about outsiders seeking redemption in one form or another and always will.Rice died from complications of a stroke at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 11, 2021, at the age of 80.

The movie starred Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as the guilt-ridden Louis, and a young Kirsten Dunst in her breakout role as the deceitful child vampire Claudia.

[108] A second film adaptation, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002, starring Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat and singer Aaliyah as Akasha.

[110] The 1994 film Exit to Eden, based loosely on the book Rice published as Anne Rampling, stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Aykroyd.

The work was transformed from a BDSM-themed love story into a police comedy, and was widely considered a box-office failure, receiving near-universal negative reviews.

[112] On November 8, 2014, during an interview with her long-time editor, Victoria Wilson, at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Rice revealed that filming had finished on the movie and was going into post-production.

Screenwriter James D. Parriott penned the screenplay, and the pilot ultimately aired on CBS, starring Dean Cain and Robert Patrick.

[118] The Feast of All Saints was made into a Showtime original miniseries in 2001, directed by Peter Medak and starring James Earl Jones and Gloria Reuben.

[128] In May 2020, it was announced that AMC had acquired the rights to The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches for developing film and television projects.

With music by Elton John and lyrics by Bernie Taupin, it was the inaugural production of the newly established Warner Brothers Theatre Ventures.

Despite Rice's own overwhelming approval and praise,[133] the show received disappointing attendance and largely negative reviews from critics.