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It’s been a year since Rupert Everett graced our shores. He caught up with Garrett Bithell.
When Rupert Everett was in town this time last year to be Mardi Gras’ chief of parade, he never got very political about his involvement.
“I’m going to the parade, I’m going to the party, I’m going to after-party, and the after-after-party. And then, I imagine, I’m going to the hospital,” he told SX at the time. And he wasn’t lying; he was spotted in sundry locations over three days in various states of inebriation.
Sitting down with Rupert in Bondi last week, he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about his exploits of the year before. It was as though he was concerned about the reputation he left behind, and very keen to divert the conversation away from Rupert the Party Animal to Rupert the Actor.
“It was really fun; I had a great time,” he says coyly. “But I’ve stopped going to parties a little.” But now that the weight of the Mardi Gras banner has been lifted from his shoulders, he has no qualms about getting political.
“I think all these pride marches have lost their centre slightly,” he asserts. “If you encountered them in the beginning of the 1980s when the gay community was really in crisis with its back against the wall, they were very highly charged events about survival and trying to define ourselves and keep our heads up.
“Now, because of all the fighting that those people did, there is a generation of mindless drug addicts – party-grazing cows who move from one side of the planet to the other, getting high and fucking each other. I’m not saying whether that’s good or bad, but it’s not political anymore.
“Maybe the thing we have to protest most is our behaviour within ourselves – maybe it’s interior not exterior. It’s up to us to see where our image to the outside world now is – because that is what’s potentially dangerous.”
Rupert is here to promote his new film, St Trinian’s, which will hit our screens next month, but his disdain for show business, or perhaps the heavies who call the shots, seems always on the tip of his tongue.
“Being gay in show business is not ideal – it’s a trophy business on the acting side,” he says. “It’s quite old-fashioned, so it’s a coupling thing. A good woman can help your career a lot, like in old-school military circles – an admiral needed a good wife.
“Show business tries to present itself as liberal and Hollywood says it is Democratic – but that’s really only a sidebar of Republicanism. I don’t think anyone in Hollywood is particularly liberal.
“That’s the schoolyard nature of our business – it’s full of straight people mostly. I don’t think there are many gay actors to be honest. It’s a very straight, footballer kind of world.”
St Trinian’s, an anarchical school for uncontrollable girls who save the school from bankruptcy by stealing the painting ‘Girl With A Pearl Earring’, is the sixth in a series of films based on the works of cartoonist Ronald Searle. Rupert plays the headmistress of the school, Miss Camilla Fritton – in drag – and her brother Carnaby Fritton.
“It was really fun getting it together and less fun doing it every day,” Rupert says of being in drag. “It takes a long time to put on and it just gets quite irritating to be fiddled around with to such an extent after a little while.
“Whereas actually plotting it and planning it and seeing what looks good and how to disguise my body to make it more feminine – the experimentation period – was really fun.”
The film also stars Colin Firth and Mischa Barton. “This is the third film I’ve done with Colin and we’re really good mates – I love him. We have an on-screen snog, which is funny, and he’s excellent in the film; he plays it just right.”
Rupert also co-produced St Trinian’s. “It’s a difficult genre the family film,” he says. “You’ve got to try and make it innocent enough for the kids and knowing enough for the adults. The other producers and I had quite different ideas about, but mainly because they have kids and wanted to make it about kids, and I have cackling queen friends and wanted to make it for them!”
He perhaps wrote his autobiography, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, for those cackling queen friends. As far as autobiographies go, you’d be hard pressed to find one more salacious and gossipy. But this apparently was not his intention.
“I thought very carefully about what I was going to write before I wrote it,” he tells. “I didn’t want it to be dishy and cutting people up or tearing people apart. So the conscious decision I made was only to write about things that I liked and people I liked.”
Rupert was originally going to be in Sydney for a month’s holiday, but he returned to the UK on Tuesday of last week due to ‘family news’. He wouldn’t elaborate, but maybe the weather scared him off…
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