HERE WE GO AGAIN

Self-Hating Gay Rupert Everett As Bitter As Ever In New Interview

PA-7607838Rupert Everett sat down with The Daily Telegraph to promote his appearance in Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus at the Chichester Festival Theatre in London and proved he’s as unbridled as ever. The ever-charming Everett, who looks nearly unrecognizable these days, talked about everything from his love for marijuana and cocaine, to his sexual history, to his favorite topic in recent years: how being openly gay damaged his career.

“All through my career it was a huge issue,” Everett said, speaking in the past tense. “Movie stars and directors and studios spend a lot of money promoting human rights and being charitable in Africa but, actually, in their own backyard, they really don’t accept that any of these things [are] happening.”

He continued: “So people mostly said to me: ‘Oh, but you’ve been so difficult and you’ve blown everything for yourself, you’ve sabotaged your own career.’ To a certain extent, it’s true, but to a certain extent, it isn’t. There’s only a certain amount of mileage you can make, as a young pretender, as a leading man, as a homosexual. There just isn’t very far you can go.”

Perhaps. Although films like The Next Best ThingInspector Gadget and the straight-to-DVD debacle A Different Loyalty in which he starred opposite Sharon Stone likely didn’t help matters. Then, of course, there was the time in 2008 when he called Americans “whiny” and gay pride paraders “party grazing cows”, and in 2009 when he encouraged gay actors to stay in the closet, and in 2012 when he said that he couldn’t think of “anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.” Oh, and let’s not forget about his 2008 kiss-and-tell memoir Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins in which he basically threw all his Hollywood friends under the bus.

But according to Everett, none of these things are what caused his career to stall. It was all homophobia in Hollywood, plain and simple. Never mind the fact that more and more actors are coming out each and every out every year, or that gay characters are being regularly featured on network television shows, or that films about gay issues have been sweeping Hollywood award ceremonies in recent years.

All that being said, one can’t help but note the irony in Everett starring in Amadeusa play about a bitter egomaniac who outlives his fame and spends the remainder of his days tearing down others while wallowing in his own mediocrity. Maybe this is just what he needs to get his career back on track.

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