Rupert Everett ~ 36 Screen Credits
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Rupert Everett ~ 36 Screen Credits Look at that lip. Hauteur, condescension, disdain writ large. "I am a very limited actor. There's a certain amount I can do and that's it," said Everett in 2014. Maybe so, but - see My Best Friend's Wedding, An Ideal Husband, Separate Lies or Unconditional Love - how well he does it. Born in Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk on 29 May 1959 the second son of parents Anthony and Sara, RUPERT JAMES HECTOR EVERETT is of English, Scottish, Irish and more distant German and Dutch ancestry. His father, who died in 2009, was a Major in the British Army who later worked in business. When he was six, Rupert was taken into Braintree for his first trip to a cinema. There was a long queue, the child was typically fretful and the grown-ups thought about leaving, but finally decided not to: And so my mother bought the fateful tickets and unknowingly guided me through a pair of swing doors into the rest of my life ... ... Those huge curtains silently swished open and Mary Poppins sprang across the footlights and into my heart. After preliminary instruction from a governess, Everett was educated at Far- leigh House School, Andover from seven to thirteen then at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire from thirteen to sixteen, at which point he absconded to London to become an actor. After two years of living the bohemian life to the full (if not excess), he won a coveted place at the Central School of Speech and Drama, but after attending for two tempestuous and more or less unrewarding years was told not to return for a third. He was given a second chance by Glasgow's avant garde Citizens Theatre, where he performed in productions such as A Waste Of Time, Don Juan and Heartbreak House. After appearing first at the Greenwich Theatre and then with Kenneth Branagh in an award-winning West End stage production of Julian Mitchell's Another Country, Everett went on reprise his role as traitor Guy Burgess (with a young Colin Firth in the Branagh part) for the screen. The success of the 1984 film brought him international attention; 1985's Dance With A Stranger further enhanced his reputation - but then came 1987 bomb Hearts Of Fire: a sorry rock snuff movie ... the full-on, no-survivors crash of my career. Matters weren't helped when in 1989 he openly acknowledged his homosex- uality - a step, he later conceded, that seriously harmed his screen career. But parts still came. In 1997, playing Julia Roberts' gay confidante George in My Best Friend's Wedding, he stole the film and has since continued intermittently to impress, notably in period or classical productions such as Shakespeare In Love (as Christopher Marlowe), An Ideal Husband, A Midsummer Night's Dream (as Oberon) and The Importance Of Being Earnest. His patrician hauteur lends itself naturally to royal portraits: in The Madness Of King George (1994), To Kill A King (2003), Stage Beauty (2004) and A Royal Night Out (2015) he plays the Prince of Wales, Charles I, Charles II and George VI respectively. In The Case Of The Silk Stocking (TV, 2004), his Sherlock Holmes is effortlessly suave. But his CV also includes more than a few turkeys - Arthur The King, Inspector Gadget, The Next Best Thing, the two St. Trinian's films and more. He acknowledges having had to hustle for work, stating in 2013: "I don't think I'd have ever had a job for the last fifteen years if I hadn't generated it myself." In making his landmark decision to "come out" when he did, Everett showed that a truly talented and successful romantic leading man can survive the career-killing stigma of being openly gay. However, he has repeatedly warned others to think twice before taking such a step since, despite the supposedly liberated times we live in, "It's not ideal to be gay and to try and be a leading man." In 2009 he told The Observer: 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. Everett is a competent musician (piano, violin), gifted author (two novels, two beautifully written memoirs - see pages 9-14 below for an extended excerpt from the first), "English", intellectual, articulate, physically imposing (he's 6' 4" and very fit), fiercely intelligent, camp, witty, scurrilous and fluent in French and Italian. As a younger man he could be difficult, narcissistic, a "monster" (his word): "I was thrilled by the glorification of me, however I could get it." He's been a rent boy, scoring money for living expenses and drugs, which, up to the age of fifty, he consumed in large quantities. He's been described as "a pouty, spoiled princeling" and "the closest thing we'll have to a 21st century Oscar Wilde" (a comparison he rejects). In 1987, he nursed dreams of pop stardom, releasing a single (Generation Of Loneliness backed with Blood Under The Bridge) that peaked at #115 in the charts and a second (In The Vortex) that went nowhere. Though internet sources claim he released an "album" at this time, online evidence (i.e. a lack of) suggests otherwise. Nonetheless, he did perform at "festivals across Europe" and declared: "If I had to choose between being successful as a singer or as an actor, I know I would choose singing." Like Hearts Of Fire, his nascent pop career crashed and burned (though, never say never, in 2000 he backed Madonna on her cover of '70s classic American Pie and a year later duetted with Robbie Williams on They Can't Take That Away From Me). A seemingly restless soul, he's had homes in London, New York, Miami, Hollywood, Paris and the Côte d'Azur. Through six years of the eighties he lived in dread of developing AIDS after several of his friends and intimate acquaintances were diagnosed with the disease. He was in Berlin when the Wall came down, Moscow when Gorbachev fell, New York on 9/11 and Miami when hurricane Wilma hit. More than once, he's accepted a job he must have known was beneath his quite considerable talent, but a man - even one as perceptive, candid, provocative and resolutely impenitent as Rupert James Hector Everett - has to live. AGATHA CHRISTIE HOUR : THE MANHOOD OF EDWARD ROBINSON (TV, 1982) Everett (above, right) has a bit part here (a couple of lines and a couple of screen minutes only) as Guy, one of a group of hooray henrys who pursue their friend Lady Noreen (Cherie Lunghi, below, right) after she's stolen a necklace to win a bet. Nicholas Farrell (below, left) is the eponymous Edward Robinson, a timid man, bossed by his frowsty fiancée and her bat of a mother, whose life changes when he wins £500. After impulsively splurging most of it on a new Riley, a fortuitous romantic adventure with the delectable Cherie awakens his alpha male. From an Agatha Christie short story. 52 minutes. Fair. IMDb: Loved it. Entertaining and different / Jolly good show / Something for everyone (as long as you're not expecting a blood and guts whodunit) / Weak. DEAD ON TIME (Short, 1983) This 33 minute comedy short features a veritable Who's Who of British acting talent, including Rowan Atkinson (below, left) in the lead part, Nigel Hawthorne (see also The Madness Of King George), Christopher Biggins, Tim McInnerny, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, the great Jim Broadbent (below, right), Leslie Ash, Gordon Kaye, Richard Curtis (who wrote the script) and, playing two tiny parts - Bank Customer and Blind Man (above) - Rupert Everett. With just two lines - C'mon, luv, make your mind up! and Greedy, aren't we? - minimal screen time and little of substance to do, Everett (here earning his fifth screen credit) passes virtually unnoticed. The story - slight and very predictable though mildly amusing - concerns a young man told by his doctor that, due to a very rare case of "Feschen's Disease", he has "less than half an hour to live". The patient then rushes off to fill his remaining minutes as meaningfully as time and opportunity allow. Of course, the foolish doctor couldn't possibly be right, could he? IMDb: I saw this short film around 1990 and thought it was utterly brilliant ... It comes to a predictable but poignant end, leaving the viewer wondering if the previous half hour was the most worthwhile of their life ... PRINCESS DAISY (TV, 1983) From a Judith Krantz novel, this trashy, two dimensional soap opera aired on TV in two 93 minute episodes. Fifth billed Everett gives a good account of himself as villain of the piece Prince Ram Valensky, a controlling cad regrettably smitten with incestuous love for his half-sister Daisy. With Paul Michael Glaser, Claudia Cardinale, Stacy Keach, Lindsay Wagner and Ringo Starr. Vacuous and trite. IMDb: The notion of hiding away a disabled child strikes at the heart and conscience. On the whole, thought-provoking but too long / The one intriguing plot element is incest and Daisy delivers a well-written speech to her ad agency boss about why she doesn't want to be his girlfriend.