Rupert Everett

Rupert Everett born 29 May 1959

Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He is perhaps the first Hollywood movie star to have a long, mainstream, and successful acting career while being openly gay, and blasé about it.

Rupert Everett was born in Norfolk, England. From the age of 7 he was educated at Farleigh House preparatory school and later was educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, but dropped out of school at 15 and ran away to London to become an actor. In order to support himself, he worked as a male prostitute, or rent boy, 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 in the avant-garde Citizens' Theatre of Glasgow.

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).

In 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. In 1995 he released a second novel, The Hairdresser of St. Tropez.

Everett's career was revitalised 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.

In 2006 Everett 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 recent years Everett has expressed the view that his career has been negatively affected by his having come out and gone so far as to advise younger actors against doing so. Whilst his career has seen him achieve varying levels of critical and commercial success through the years, this may be as much due to his limitations as an actor - posh, brittle, slightly camp - as to the industry's view of him as a gay actor.