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Rupert Everett
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Rupert James Hector Everett (born May 29, 1959) is a two-time Golden Globe-nominated English film actor and ex-singer. He first came into public attention in the early 1980s when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country for playing an openly homosexual student at an English public school, set in the 1930s. Since then he has subsequently appeared in many other films including Dunston Checks In, My Best Friend's Wedding, The Next Best Thing and the Shrek sequels. He currently lives in London and is considering buying a property in Templin, Germany.
BackgroundEverett was born and raised in Norfolk, England, the son of Sara and Major Anthony Michael Everett, who worked in business and served in the military. Through his maternal grandparents, Lady Opre Vyvyan and Vice Admiral Sir Hector Charles Donald MacLean, he is a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German Schmiedern barons, as well as a grand-nephew of Donald Duart Maclean, the Soviet double agent, and a great-grandson of the Liberal politician Sir Donald Maclean, who was Leader of the parliamentary opposition in the years following the First World War. He has an older brother, Simon Anthony Cunningham Everett (b. 1956).
From the age of 7 he was educated at Farleigh School, Hampshire, and later was educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, but he dropped out of school aged 15 and ran away to London to become an actor. In order to support himself, he worked as a male prostitute, or "rent boy", for drugs and money as he later admitted to US magazine in 1997. After being dismissed from the Central School of Speech and Drama for insubordination, he travelled to Scotland and got a job at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow.
Career1980sHis break came with the 1982 West End production of Another Country, playing a gay schoolboy opposite Kenneth Branagh, followed by a film version in 1984 with Colin Firth. He began to develop a promising film career, until he co-starred with Bob Dylan in the huge flop Hearts of Fire (1987). Around the same time, Everett recorded and released an album of pop songs, entitled Generation Of Loneliness. Despite being managed by the largely successful pop svengali Simon Napier-Bell (who also managed Marc Bolan, launched and managed Japan, and steered Wham! to international fame) and the title track reaching the Top 40 in the UK, the public didn't take to his change in direction. The shift was shortlived, and he would only return to pop indirectly by providing backing vocals for his friend Madonna many years later, on her cover of "American Pie" and on the track "They Can't Take That Away from Me" on Robbie Williams' "Swing when you're winning" in 2001.
1990sIn 1989 he moved to Paris, writing a novel Hello, Darling, Are You Working? and coming out as gay, a move which some at the time perceived as damaging to his career. Returning to the public eye in The Comfort of Strangers (1990), several films of variable success followed. The Italian comics character Dylan Dog, created by Tiziano Sclavi, is graphically inspired by him. The English actor, in turn, later appeared in an adaptation of a novel based on Sclavi's novel, Dellamorte Dellamore. In 1995 he released a second novel, The Hairdressers of St. Tropez.
His career was revitalized by My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), playing Julia Roberts's gay friend. In 1999, he played Madonna's gay best friend in The Next Best Thing (he also sang backup on her cover of "American Pie", which is on the film's soundtrack). He has since appeared in a number of high-profile film roles, often playing heterosexual leads. He is also a Vanity Fair contributing editor.
2000sIn 2006, he published his memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. In it he revealed he had had a 6-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates. I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs but then I am mystified by most of my relationships," he said, with the article describing him as bisexual as opposed to homosexual. But in a radio show with Jonathan Ross, Everett described his heterosexual affairs as resulting from adventurousness: "I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything". In an interview on This Morning he simply described himself as homosexual, making a joke of any suggestion he might find a woman attractive.
In 2007 he appeared in the Comic Relief special Comic Relief Does The Apprentice, where he left after a day after being very uncomfortable being in front of cameras. He also led the 2007 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
In May 2007, he attended the memorial service of the late fashion model Isabella Blow, who committed suicide. He gave the eulogy at her funeral. On July 7, he presented Live Earth. On July 20 2007 he presented the Channel 4 show, The Friday Night Project. On August 3 2007 he said a controversial remark on BBC One's Breakfast about why one would frequent the back of a provincial cinema. The remark was about how you could 'finger your girlfriend' in such a cinema.
On June 8 2008, he made controversial criticisms of the British army, calling them "whining wimps" in comparison to their Victorian predecessors. At a previous interview with UK's Radio Times he also made scathing remarks about America, American culture and the country's national identity post-9/11.
Golden Globe nominations
FilmographyTelevision (selection)
External links- type="text/javascript">DisplayLink("http://www.afterelton.com/archive/elton/people/2005/3/everett.html", "In-depth biography with many quotes from Everett and friends")
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