Rupert Everett

Everett's documentary entitled The Victorian Sex Explorer on Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) in which he retraces the travels of Burton through countries such as India and Egypt, aired on the BBC in 2008.

For the 21st century, Everett decided to write again.

He has been a Vanity Fair contributing editor, written for The Guardian, and he wrote a film screenplay on playwright Oscar Wilde's final years, for which he sought funding.

Rupert James Hector Everett (born 29 May 1959) is an English actor.

Rupert James Hector Everett was born on 29 May 1959 to wealthy parents.

His father was in the British Army, Major Anthony Michael Everett.

His maternal grandfather, Vice Admiral Sir Hector Charles Donald MacLean DSO, was a nephew of Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, Hector Lachlan Stewart MacLean.

His maternal grandmother, Opre Vyvyan, was a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German Freiherr (Baron) von Schmiedern.

Everett is of English, Irish, Scottish, and more distant German and Dutch ancestry.

He was raised a Roman Catholic.

From age seven, Everett was educated at Farleigh School in Andover, Hampshire, and later educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire.

When he was 16, his parents agreed that he could leave school and move to London to train as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

He first came to public attention in 1981 when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country (1984) as a gay pupil at an English public school in the 1930s; the role earned him his first BAFTA Award nomination.

Everett's break came in 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre and later West End production of Another Country, playing a gay schoolboy opposite Kenneth Branagh.

His first film was the Academy Award-winning short A Shocking Accident (1982), directed by James Scott and based on a Graham Greene story.

This was followed by a film version of Another Country in 1984 with Cary Elwes and Colin Firth.

Following on with Dance With a Stranger (1985), Everett began to develop a promising film career until he co-starred with Bob Dylan in the unsuccessful Hearts of Fire (1987).

Around the same time, Everett recorded and released an album of pop songs entitled Generation of Loneliness.

Despite being managed by Simon Napier-Bell (who had steered Wham! to prominence), the public didn't take to his change in direction.

The Italian comics character Dylan Dog, created by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, is graphically inspired by him.

In 1989, Everett moved to Paris, writing a novel, Hello, Darling, Are You Working?, and coming out as gay, a disclosure which he has said may well have damaged his career.

Returning to the public eye in The Comfort of Strangers (1990), several films of variable success followed.

Everett, in turn, appeared in Cemetery Man (1994), an adaptation of Sclavi's novel Dellamorte Dellamore.

In 1995 Everett published a second novel, The Hairdressers of St. Tropez.

He received a second BAFTA nomination and his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his role in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), followed by a second Golden Globe nomination for An Ideal Husband (1999).

In an interview with US magazine in 1997, he said that he supported himself during this period by doing sex work for drugs and money.

His career was revitalised by his award-winning performance in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), playing Julia Roberts's character's gay friend, followed by a role as Madonna's character's best friend in The Next Best Thing (2000).

(Everett was a backup vocalist on her cover of "American Pie", which is on the film's soundtrack.) Around the same time, he starred as the sadistic Sanford Scolex/Dr.

Claw in Disney's Inspector Gadget (also 1999) with Matthew Broderick.

The shift was short-lived, and he only returned to pop indirectly by providing backing vocals for Madonna many years later, on her cover of "American Pie" and on the track "They Can't Take That Away from Me" on Robbie Williams' Swing When You're Winning in 2001.

In 2006, Everett published a memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, in which he reveals his six-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates.

Although he is sometimes described as bisexual, as opposed to gay, during a radio show with Jonathan Ross, he described his heterosexual affairs as the result of adventurousness: "I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything".

Since the revelation of his sexuality, Everett has participated in public activities (leading the 2007 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras), played a double role in the film St. Trinian's, and has appeared on TV several times (as a contestant in the special Comic Relief Does The Apprentice; as a presenter for Live Earth; and as a guest host on the Channel 4 show The Friday Night Project, among others).

He has also garnered media attention for his vitriolic quips and forthright opinions during interviews that have caused public outrage.

In May 2007, he delivered one of the eulogies at the funeral of fashion director Isabella Blow, his friend since they were teenagers, who had died by suicide.

He asked as part of his speech: "Have you gotten what you wanted, Issie? Life was a relationship that you rejected."

During this time he also voiced the nefarious, but handsome villain Prince Charming in the first two Shrek sequels.

In 2009, Everett told British newspaper The Observer that he wished he had never revealed his sexuality, as he feels that it hurt his career and advised younger actors against such candour.

Also in 2009, Everett presented two Channel 4 documentaries: one on the travels of Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, broadcast in July 2009, and another on British explorer Sir Richard Burton.

Everett then returned to his acting roots, appearing in several theatre productions: his Broadway debut in 2009 at the Shubert Theatre received positive critical reviews; he performed in a Noël Coward play Blithe Spirit, starring alongside Angela Lansbury, Christine Ebersole and Jayne Atkinson, under the direction of Michael Blakemore.