Happy Birthday to English Actor, Author, Rupert Everett

Rupert Everett was born today, May 29, in 1959. He is an out gay English actor and writer. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country (1984) as an openly homosexual pupil at an English public school in the 1930s; the role earned him his first BAFTA Award nomination. He went on to receive a second BAFTA Award 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).

Everett has performed in many other prominent films, including The Madness of King George (1994), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Inspector Gadget (1999), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), The Next Best Thing (2000), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Stardust (2007) and the Shrek sequels. He co-starred with Eva Green in Tim Burton's film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). 

The Happy Prince is an upcoming British biographical drama film about Oscar Wilde, written, directed by, and starring Everett as Wilde. Everett is also starring in another film opening this year, Swords and Sceptres. a period drama about the 1857 Indian Rebellion against the British East India Company.

Everett was born in Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk. He left school at 16 and ran away to London to become an actor. In order to support himself during this time, he worked as a prostitute for drugs and money—he disclosed this information in an interview for US magazine in 1997.

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). 

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. In 1995 he released a second novel, The Hairdressers of St. Tropez.

For the 21st century, Everett has decided to write again. He has been a Vanity Fair contributing editor, has written for The Guardian. In 2006 Everett published a memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, in which he reveals his 6-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates. Although he is sometimes described as bisexual, as opposed to homosexual, he described his heterosexual affairs during a radio show with Jonathan Ross as the result of adventurousness: "I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything." He wrote another memoir, Vanished Years, in 2012.

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:

“The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. You're going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they'll cut you right off... Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out.”

During 2013, Everett, a former sex worker, worked on the production of a documentary on sex work for Channel 4 that includes the issue of criminalization. Both during and after the filming of the documentary, Everett contributed to the discourse on prostitution legislation in the UK.