Rupert Everett Says No to Gay Marriage!

Rupert Everett is like Marmite (that’s a thick dark yeast based spread, if you’re not up with English breakfast accouterments!), you either love him or hate him, very rarely  anything in between. Luckily for me I love him.  Even since as a young impressionable lad I saw the film Another Country.  He reprised his 1984 role as Guy Bennett in the film, which is a wonderfully emotive tale based a little loosely on the early life of the gay spy, whose defection to Russia in the early 1950’s  shocked the country.  Rupert played the floppy haired Guy Bennett so perfectly, so innocently, it remains to this day a firm favorite.

Since then of course Everett’s career has seen it’s fair share of up’s and down’s rather like a whores knickers!  He’s had a few major hits, films  like My Best Friends Wedding and The Next Best Thing spring to mind,  along with a flirtatious friendship with Madonna. Of course there are his books, firstly the lovely‘Hello Darling, Are You Working?’, which he apparently wrote whilst living in Paris during 1989. Secondly,  there’s been his memoir ‘Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins’.

He’s done loads of other theater and film work, including new versions of St.Trinians, however, sadly he seems to be hitting the headlines more these days for his more outlandish and outrageous comments in interviews.

Last year in The Observer he advises gay actors to stay in the closet.

“The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn’t work and you’re going to hit a brick wall at some point. You’re going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they’ll cut you right off… Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out.”

Maybe he’s calmed down a bit, there wasn’t anything even remotely scandalous, outrageous or even a little near titter worthy  in his latest interview in last weeks Sunday Times Magazine.

Nope, he seemed to take the more relaxed way of getting his points across, no hissy fits, no talk of fingering girl friends, no naughty words, just honest simple answers.  He talked about his Brazilian boyfriend; “I think Brazilians are quite fashionable, yes. They’re really fun to be with. They’re passionate and exciting — you never quite know where you are.”

They’ve been dating for some two years now,  but he dismisses the notion of his new love being his Mr Right “I don’t think there’s such a thing. I’m very incompatible with everybody. I’m very difficult, and very set in my ways, like an old goat plodding his old goat path.” Very selfish? “Quite selfish, yes. Not so much with him. But I’m very self-obsessed. You can’t not be, as an actor — your whole life is made up of trying to become more successful.”

He also dismisses the idea of his entering a gay marriage; “No. There’s something missing in me, both gay and straight — I don’t want to be in too close contact with anyone. A night with someone is one thing, but I soon want to get out. I think I was always, from when I was a kid, worried that something else might be happening and I would be missing it — the party or the lover or the job.”

“It’s terribly destructive. And the idea of staying with someone, being part of a couple, always made me feel marooned — as if I was on a desert island away from the group somehow. And as a young guy I was so desperate to succeed as an actor, that overrode everything. I was like a vampire trying to figure out ways of getting more blood.”

He’s going to be back on stage here in England, at the Chichester Festival to star as Professor Higgins in Pygmalion. “I adore Shaw. When I was five we had three records at home — Salad Days, Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady — and I used to listen to them incessantly. I think Professor Higgins is quite a dark character. Hopefully the ending will be quite sad.”

Nothing quite like a happy ending!

Read the fill interview in The Sunday Times Magazine.

Jason Shaw

UK Correspondent for gayagenda.com