Rupert Everett

Rupert James Hector Everett (; born 29 May 1959 ) is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981 when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as a gay pupil at an English public school in the 1930s; the role earned him his first BAFTA Award nomination. 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). He voiced Prince Charming in the animated films Shrek 2 (2004) and Shrek the Third (2007). He also played John Lamont/Mr. Barron in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016).

Early life and education Rupert James Hector Everett was born on 29 May 1959, to wealthy parents. His father, Major Anthony Michael Everett, was in the British Army. His maternal grandfather, Vice Admiral Sir Hector Charles Donald MacLean DSO, His maternal grandmother, Opre Vyvyan, was a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German (Baron) von Schmiedern. Everett is of English, Irish, Scottish, and more distant German and Dutch ancestry. He was raised a Roman Catholic.

Everett has also disclosed that he identified as transgender during his childhood and dressed as a girl from age 6 to 14. When he turned 15, he ceased to identify as female and embraced his identity as a gay man. 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. 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.

Career

1980s 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. In 1982, he had an early screen role in "The Manhood of Edward Robinson", a play in The Agatha Christie Hour series. He also acted at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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). Everett also sang two songs in Hearts of Fire, having released his first single "Generation of Loneliness" earlier that year in May 1987.

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

1990s

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

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 gay 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.

2000s

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.

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.

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.

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. In 2009, Everett suggested, in an interview with the British newspaper The Observer, that coming out was not the best career move for a young actor. 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. and he was expected to tour several Italian cities during the 2008–09 winter season in another Coward play Private Lives (performed in Italian, which he speaks fluently) —playing Elyot to Italian actress Asia Argento's Amanda—but the production was cancelled.

2010s

During the summer of 2010, Everett performed as Professor Henry Higgins, with English actress Honeysuckle Weeks and Stephanie Cole, in a revival of Pygmalion at the Chichester Festival Theatre. He reprised the role in May 2011 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End, starring alongside Diana Rigg and Kara Tointon.

In July 2010, Everett was featured in the family history programme Who Do You Think You Are? Released in late 2010, the comedy film Wild Target features Everett as an art-loving gangster, and also starred Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt.

In 2012, Everett starred in the television adaptation of Parade's End with Benedict Cumberbatch. The five-part drama was adapted by Sir Tom Stoppard from the novels of Ford Madox Ford, and Everett appears as the brother of protagonist Christopher Tietjens.

Everett then starred as Oscar Wilde in The Judas Kiss, a stage play which was revived at London's Hampstead Theatre toured the UK and Dublin, then transferred to the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre on 9 January 2013, in a limited run through 6 April 2013.

Everett won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Play, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actor. In 2016 the production, still starring Everett and with Charlie Rowe as Bosie, ran in North America for seven weeks in Toronto and five weeks at BAM in New York City.

In early 2013, Everett began working on a film portraying the final period of Wilde's life, stating in the media that he has had a fascination with the playwright since he was a child, as his mother read him Wilde's children's story The Happy Prince before he slept. The subsequent film The Happy Prince, written and directed by Everett, was released in 2018.

In 2015, it was announced that he would play the part of Philippe Achille, Marquis de Feron, the corrupt Governor of Paris, Head of the Red Guard and illegitimate brother to Louis XIII in the third series of the BBC One drama The Musketeers.

In 2017, Everett appeared as a recurring character in the BBC 2 comedy Quacks. He plays Dr Hendricks, the neurotic principal of the medical school.

Personal life In the 1990s, Everett had a six-year-long affair with television presenter and writer Paula Yates, who was married to Bob Geldof at the time. Later discussing the relationship, Everett dismissed suggestions that he was bisexual, calling his heterosexual experience merely an "experiment". By 2020, Everett was living with his partner Henrique, a Brazilian accountant; they married in 2024.

Between 2006 and 2010, Everett lived in New York City, but returned to London because of his father's poor health. In 2008, he bought a home in another Central London district, Belgravia. By 2025, Everett was living near Enford, Wiltshire, to be closer to family; there, he was involved in a campaign to prevent the closure of a local pub. Everett is a supporter of the Campaign for Real Ale. In 2025, he noted that his views had shifted rightward in response to mass immigration, taxation rises, and constitutional policies instituted by both Labour and Conservative governments since 1997.

In a 2020 interview, Everett expressed his opposition to cancel culture. In 2025, he criticised what he termed "Cinematic Wokery" and the emergence of a more "puritanical" environment in "the world of entertainment": "we've got into a world where everybody's so easily offended by anything[...] that the result is that everything is completely predictable, and as a result really quite boring."

Everett has commented on various issues pertaining to sex and gender identity. In 2013, he worked on a documentary about sex work for Channel 4. That year, he signed an open letter from the English Collective of Prostitutes and Queer Strike to oppose the adoption of the "Swedish model", whereby the clients of sex workers (though not the workers themselves) are criminalised. In 2014, he wrote a long-form article on the issue for The Guardian and discussed it on the BBC One programme This Week.

In 2012, Everett expressed criticism of same-sex marriage. Explaining that he hated weddings and thought the institution of marriage was "so clearly a disaster", he deemed it "beyond tragic" that same-sex couples wanted access to it. Although arguing that same-sex couples should be allowed to raise children, he stated that he could not "think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads", because for him, "being gay was about wanting to do the opposite of the straight world". Drawing on his own experience as a child who wanted to be female for several years, Everett expressed opposition in 2016 to hormone replacement therapy for children and thought it "scary" that some parents offered their offspring the opportunity of gender transition.

Filmography

Film Year Title Role Notes 1982 A Shocking Accident Jerome and Mr. Weathersby Short film 1983 Dead on Time Bank Customer / Blind Man 1984 Another Country Guy Bennett 1985 Dance with a Stranger David Blakeley 1986 Duet for One Constantine Kassanis 1987The Gold Rimmed Glasses Davide Lattes a.k.a. Gli occhiali d'oro Hearts of Fire James Colt Chronicle of a Death Foretold Bayardo San Román The Right-Hand Man Lord Harry Ironminster 1990 The Comfort of Strangers Colin 1994 Prêt-à-Porter Jack Lowenthal The Madness of King George George, Prince of Wales Cemetery Man Francesco Dellamorte a.k.a. Dellamorte Dellamore 1996 Dunston Checks In Lord Rutledge 1997 My Best Friend's Wedding George Downes 1998 Shakespeare in Love Christopher Marlowe Uncredited B. Monkey Paul Neville 1999 An Ideal Husband Lord Goring Inspector Gadget Sanford Scolex/Dr. Claw A Midsummer Night's Dream Oberon 2000 Paragraph 175 Narrator Documentary The Next Best Thing Robert Whittaker 2001 South Kensington Nicholas "Nick" Brett 2002 The Importance of Being Earnest Algernon / "Bunbury" The Wild Thornberrys Movie Sloan Blackburn Voice 2003 Unconditional Love Dirk Simpson To Kill a King King Charles I 2004 Stage Beauty King Charles II Shrek 2 Prince Charming Voice Older Patrick Hazelwood Lead Heads Post-production

Television

Theatre

Awards and nominations