Interview: Rupert Everett, actor

Published on Tuesday 15 December 2009 13:19

Cast as the headmistress in the St Trinian films, Rupert Everett about dressing in drag as Camilla Parker Bowles, and why he's off to Brazil for sex and surgery

EARLIER this month Rupert Everett visited an old Wiltshire church for the funeral of his father, a former army major. The following week he walked the red carpet for the film premiere of St Trinian's, in which he plays the heroine headmistress Camilla Fritton. His life, he reflects, takes place at the extremes.

We meet in Soho, where Everett, who turned 50 this year, blends in easily with his fashionable beard, beanie hat and aura of fame. Yet he says his father's death reminds him of his genetic inheritance and his affection for it.

"It was a nice funeral. My father is (sic] 89 so it was sweet to have all that thing of being in the army, war, rationing, an entre from the army to the City, the old boy network. It is a world that is on its way out, or gone.

"You define yourself through rebellion, but the thing about middle age is that life is like a spring tide pulling you back until you end up on the beach where you were born. Your attitude at 25 to the death of your father is different from when you are 50. There is a different kind of frisson; it is fear for yourself as well, and a sense of all generations being one person.

"In a way, I was pleased that he died because he had been ill for years, just wear and tear, so that, little by little, his faculties had deserted him. He had lost his sight and become more cut off from the world, but the way he dealt with it was admirable and touching. He was very stoic. And at the same time he got everything he wanted. He had the old country life, which will disappear soon."

Major Everett was a fully realised character in his son's autobiography, Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins. Now the actor is halfway through his next book, which will be about his world view and characters he has known, from Nicky Haslam, the interior designer, to Isabella Blow, the fashion muse, to his father.

But what is really exciting him now is his next film project, in which he will play Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal leader accused and acquitted of conspiring to murder his alleged lover, Norman Scott. The film, which is planned for the BBC, will hand Everett, he hopes, his first award-winning role. He has claimed in earlier interviews that his homosexuality has stopped him getting the big Hollywood role. Since then he has noticed an even more dispiriting career development. "What has happened now is that if there is a serious gay role then they bring in a straight actor to play it."

He has just been to see his friend and St Trinian's co-star Colin Firth in Single Man. "I realised then that the game was up. Colin playing a gay character, that should be my role! He was fabulous but I realised that Colin was going to get the gay roles and I would have to do drag or television presenting."

So the chance to play someone as charismatic as Jeremy Thorpe, in a film directed by the marketable Ben Ross, is a happy twist of fate for Everett.

"What a part! One of my first memories is of my grandmother saying to my mother in a sotto voce voice that the first Mrs Thorpe had died at a level crossing, according to my grandmother, with tears in her eyes because she had just found out that Jeremy Thorpe was a bender. I remember vividly saying: 'Why? Why? Why did she have tears in her eyes?'"

The story of Jeremy Thorpe suits Everett perfectly because it is not just a gay drama but an irresistible glimpse of English social history, when homosexuality was still an illegal act.

"It is so English, so farcical. It is a better story than Profumo, I think, because Jeremy Thorpe was one of the first glamour politicians. Like Blair, he was too clever for his own good. And then you have this homosexual world so different from now. It was the Vaseline jar and the towel on the bed. Really, the sex scenes are like sticking a pig."

In St Trinian's, he says he based the role of Camilla Fritton on Camilla Parker Bowles. "I wrote to her to ask her to the premiere of the first film," he says. "I had this fantasy about the film being about to start and both of us arriving together in a mini, me in drag, and just chatting away like two girlfriends, then leaving straight away at the end of the film. She turned me down but she was very nice and said that she gathered the role was based on her and she wished us luck. Then I met her and she was very nice. So she is still my role model."

The filming of St Trinian's was also a chance to torment his old friend Colin Firth again. During the making of the first St Trinian's film, Everett insisted that Firth had, in his youth, bored everyone by singing Lemon Tree accompanied by his guitar, with his eyes closed. This time, his chosen slander is that Firth has suddenly become a "bitchy old queen" who was finally ostracised by the rest of the cast because of his unceasing "malicious gossip".

There is no teasing of the other star of the film, the villain played by David Tennant. "David is very nice," says Everett carefully. "Very, very serious. He is very serious and he has very serious intentions. All hail to him."

The joy of Everett is that he is rarely very serious for long. Life is a theatre of the absurd and he plays his part in it.

"When I grow old there will be no-one to wipe my bottom, so I might as well have a fatal heart attack on stage, playing some cameo role in Shakespeare, as my dresser wrestles off my prize amethyst ring. 'Noooo, my liege, aaargh'."

He is both larky and perturbed about age. He has noticed, for instance, that he is not as pretty as he was. "I am a bit more Prisoner Cell Block H now. I think my Camilla Fritton may need a facelift. Not the other Camilla, of course…"

He is determined not to fall into the middle-age trap of becoming irritated by the culture of youth. He is very deliberately enthusiastic, for instance, about The X Factor. "I am totally into it, the way that the spectators have taken charge. I love Simon Cowell. I love Cheryl Cole, because she's so beautiful. If I were straight, she would be my kind of guy, I mean girl. I love Dannii Minogue. She is now one of the most famous women in the country, because from now on at drama schools they will be doing classes on presenting the weather, as well as Chekhov and Shakespeare. Acting has become reality."

I ask Everett how his old friend Madonna, who has cooled towards him since an unflattering mention of her "sweat" smell appeared in Everett's autobiography, is dealing with middle age.

"I don't think she has taken it on board. Well, I suppose she has a 23-year-old boyfriend, and if you have the stamina… But one's life becomes more constructed in middle age, whereas at 23 everything is a pasture to graze. Both Madonna and Sam Taylor-Wood are control freaks with a capital C. I don't know how they manage to let a young partner breathe. They macro-manage their time. Maybe it is easiest for us queers to have young relationships because we don't have that structure to our lives."

He observes that Madonna and Taylor-Wood are probably attracted to youth for professional reasons as much as personal ones. "It's how you keep up with fashion. You watch what they watch."

Rupert will be spending Christmas with his mother in Wiltshire, with their shared memories. And after that?

"Brazil!" he says, eyes bright. What happens in Brazil? "Oh, you know, sex change, surgery, shopping, all the Ss." And, gurgling with laughter, he pulls down his beanie hat and heads out into the Soho rain. There is uproarious life after 50. v

St Trinian's 2: The Legend Of Fritton's Gold is released on Friday www.sttriniansmovie.co.uk