Lordy. Rupert Everett is 55 years old today.
I had a major crush on him when his career first launched, with Another Country in 1984 - when he and I were both mere babes. I watched with horror how the beauteous ingénue began being subsumed in the morass of Hollywood (with its penchant for Botox and B-movie roles), then breathed a sigh of relief when his savage self-destructiveness propelled him double-quick back out again.
It didn't exactly help matters when he announced on daytime TV in America - land of the hypocritical "new puritans" - how his student days were supplemented by prostitution; nor did his tirade of celebrity slaggings-off in his autobiography Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins assist his safe passage. It was probably unwise to describe former "BFF" Queen Madge as a "whiny old barmaid" who played with her boyfriend's penis in public...
I thought it was brilliant, actually - and I admire Mr Everett for being such a wonderful old-school rebellious bitch.
He's settled more-or-less into a life of stage stardom and cerebral documentary-presenting roles these days, and we certainly don't see enough of him.
And yes. I still would.
But he's still full of surprises - who even knew he sang?!
(...after a fashion.)
"I'm a gay man who came from the last years of illegality. That focused my whole character. I think it focused everyone's character in a way. You saw yourself as outside of the main structure."
"Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you."
"These awful middle-class queens - which is what the gay movement has become - are so tiresome. It's all Abercrombie & Fitch and strollers."
“I have nothing to complain about... except maybe people wondering if a queen like me can be butch-it-up enough to play a convincing straight man.”
"You're not allowed to be an eccentric in the world, you have to fit in."
Rupert James Hector Everett (born 29th May 1959)
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