Self Hating Robert Everett: “Gays with AIDS looking like the Undead”

                                                                             

Prepare yourself for some eye-rolling. Rupert Everett, who at 55 is looking about 107 these days (sorry, but he is!), is continuing his decade-long press tour of blaming everyone but himself for his problems, this time to The Daily Telegraph.

For the 1000th or so time, Everett blamed his career decline on being openly gay, this time adding in how Hollywood is all about "helping Africa" but will not accept gay men like himself:

“There’s a whole side of my business now which clicks its fingers for world peace and equal rights. Movie stars and directors and studios spend a lot of money promoting human rights and being charitable in Africa but, actually, in their own backyard, they really don’t accept that any of these things is happening. So people mostly said to me: 'Oh, but you’ve been so difficult and you’ve blown everything for yourself, you’ve sabotaged your own career.’ To a certain extent, it’s true, but to a certain extent, it isn’t. There’s only a certain amount of mileage you can make, as a young pretender, as a leading man, as a homosexual. There just isn’t very far you can go.”

So true, Rupert! Just like what happened to Ian McKellan or Neil Patrick Harris or Matt Bomer or Jim Parsons or Alan Cumming or Zachary Quinto or Stephen Fry! 

Worse, Everett brings up AIDS in an extraordinarily narcissistic and problematic way:

“AIDS in the Eighties was a very, very scary thing. There were people walking around with the disease that looked like the undead. Terrifying. I spent the first six years of my career thinking that any minute now I would probably come out with it. The first 10 years of my career were conducted with this interior hysteria of terror. In one sense, it made everything unpleasant. With every lens, I was wondering if they were going in too tight on what I might be hiding. I was very lucky, considering my very sluttish behaviour, never to get HIV. But I always thought I had it. I can look at films I’ve been in and see in my face this sheer terror.”

Alright, so a) 10 years?? why didn't you just get fucking tested?; b) for a self-proclaimed "slut," you sure are offering some slut shame and general stigma toward promiscuous behaviour; and c) "the undead"? so much respect you have for those not so "lucky" as you...

Once again, you have confirmed to all of us that being an asshole likely derailed your career, not so much the homophobia… 

BY JEREMY STALEY

http://blogs.indiewire.com

The actor Rupert Everett has re-stated his belief that being gay stifled his acting career, telling the Daily Telegraph "there’s only a certain amount of mileage you can make, as a young pretender, as a leading man, as a homosexual. There just isn’t very far you can go”. 

The My Best Friend Wedding's star, promoting his be appearance in Peter Schaffer's Amadeus in Chichester, said: "You can only understand the disaster of your own case yourself. You can’t ever expect the world to see everything about yourself in the way that you do – certainly in terms of conducting a career as a homosexual in show business. Not so much now, maybe, because I’m older. It’s not such a threatening problem. But all through my career it was a huge issue.

"There’s a whole side of my business now which clicks its fingers for world peace and equal rights. Movie stars and directors and studios spend a lot of money promoting human rights and being charitable in Africa but, actually, in their own backyard, they really don’t accept that any of these things is happening. So people mostly said to me: 'Oh, but you’ve been so difficult and you’ve blown everything for yourself, you’ve sabotaged your own career.’ To a certain extent, it’s true, but to a certain extent, it isn’t."

Everett has previously advised gay actors to keep their sexuality private. In a 2003 interview with BBC HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur, he spoke of gay actors' frustrations playing only gay parts.

"Straight men get every opportunity to play gay parts that they want and then win tons of awards for doing so," Everett said. "But the other way doesn’t really work out. The mainstream actor has had to become straighter and straighter and straight."

Hannah Jane Parkinson

theguardian.com