Rupert Everett

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Rupert Everett
Everett at the 2007 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Born	Rupert James Hector Everett 29 May 1959 (1959-05-29) (age 49) Norfolk, England
Occupation	actor, ex-singer
Years active	1982 – present
Awards won Other awards NBR Award for Best Cast 1994 Prêt-à-Porter

Rupert James Hector Everett (born 29 May 1959) is a two-time Golden Globe-nominated English film actor and ex-singer. He first came to 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 My Best Friend's Wedding, An Ideal Husband, The Next Best Thing and the Shrek sequels. He currently lives in London.^[1][2]

[edit] Personal background

Everett was born and raised in Norfolk, England to Sara (née MacLean, 19 September 1934 - ) 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.^[3][4] 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.^[5] 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.

[edit] Career

[edit] 1980s

His 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.

[edit] 1990s

In 1989 he moved to Paris, writing a novel, Hello, Darling, Are You Working? and coming out as gay, a move which some^[who?] at the time perceived as damaging to his career.^{[citation needed]} 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.

[edit] 2000s

Everett attending a speed dating event with When the Music Stops, for Channel 4's The Friday Night Project in July 2007.

Throughout the 2000s, Everett has decided to write again. He has been a Vanity Fair contributing editor and wrote a film screenplay on playwriter Oscar Wilde's final years, for which he seeks funding.^[6] In 2006, he published a memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. In it he revealed he had a 6-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates.^[7] "I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs — but then I am mystified by most of my relationships," he wrote.^{[citation needed]} Although he is sometimes described as bisexual as opposed to homosexual, at a radio show with Jonathan Ross, he described his heterosexual affairs as resulting from adventurousness: "I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything"^[8] and in an interview on This Morning he simply described himself as homosexual, making a joke of any suggestion he might find a woman attractive.^{[citation needed]}

Since then, he has participated in public activities (leading the 2007 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras), played a double role in the film St. Trinian's, and has appeared on TV several times (as a contestant in the special Comic Relief Does The Apprentice, as a presenter at Live Earth and as guest host at Channel 4 show The Friday Night Project among others), but has made much news for making shocking comments and remarks at interviews that have caused public outrage.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

In May 2007, he delivered one of the eulogies at the funeral of fashionista Isabella Blow, his friend since they were in their teens.

[edit] Future projects

He will be the presenter in a Channel 4 documentary on Romantic poet Lord Byron's travels, due to be broadcast in April 2009^[15][16] and has a part in the upcoming 2009 comedy film Wild Target, starring Bill Nighy. Also, in the 2008-2009 winter he is expected to tour several Italian cities in Noël Coward's play Private Lives (performed in Italian, which he speaks fluently), playing Elyot to Italian actress Asia Argento's Amanda^[17] and in February 2009 he will make his Broadway debut performing in another Noël Coward play, Blithe Spirit, starring alongside Angela Lansbury and Christine Ebersole, directed by Michael Blakemore.^[18][19]

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Cinema

[edit] Television (selection)

• The Manhood of Edward Robinson (1981) — guy
• Soft Targets (1982) — Actor
• Princess Daisy (1983) — Ram Valenski
• The Far Pavilions (1984) — George Garforth
• Arthur the King (1985) — Lancelot
• Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (2001) — Host
• Les Liaisons dangereuses (2003) — Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont
• Mr. Ambassador (2003) — Ambassador Ronnie Childers
• To Kill a King (2003) — King Charles I
• Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004) — Sherlock Holmes
• Boston Legal (2005) — Malcolm Holmes
• The Friday Night Project (2006) — Guest host, himself
• Comic Relief Does The Apprentice (2007) — Celebrity contestant (walked out during first episode)
• The Friday Night Project (2007) — Guest host
• Katie & Peter: Unleashed (2007) — Celebrity Guest
• The Victorian Sex Explorer ^[20] (2008) — Presenter

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Rupert Everett at the Internet Movie Database
• http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/44081/being-famous-has-become-rather-common.thtml
• Rupert Everett biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• In-depth biography with many quotes from Everett and friends
• Interview and review of Everett's memoir
• Rupert Fires Himself on Celebrity Apprentice
• Rupert says more naughty things
• John Walsh, Rupert Everett: Head Boy, The Independent, 15 December 2007
• Listen To The Song Generation Of Loneliness