Horror writer Stephen King has been accused of defamation and
invasion of privacy by a writer who believes that she was the
inspiration for Annie Wilkes, the sadistic nurse depicted in King’s
best-seller, Misery, according to news site Celebrity Justice.
Anne Hiltner, a 58-year-old freelancer from New Jersey, also
claims that a character in Stephen King's TV miniseries "Kingdom
Hospital" was taken from her private diaries.
She is demanding $500 million, according to the Sydney Morning
Herald, which also notes: "The jumbled lawsuit doesn't detail how
King allegedly pilfered the diaries or what was in them."
It is not the first time that Hiltner has sued King. In 1991,
courts dismissed a similar suit claiming that Misery was
plagiarised from Hiltner’s own writings, and did so again in
relation to a later claim that King’s novel Riding the Bullet was
taken from a story written by Hiltner’s brother.
