Rupert Everett Unleashed

It’s good to know you’re not judgmental. Do you regret having come out as a gay man? Does it anger you that a lot of actors who are gay have chosen not to come out and have better careers to show for it?

No. What I find I regret—what pisses me off—is this complicity among everyone else against a queen even though they don’t even know it. Even people who consider themselves thoughtful. So what people say about me is, “Isn’t it amazing that you didn’t really try very hard in your career? Your career is so up and down.” But the reason my career is so up and down is that I get very little opportunity. There is just very little opportunity for a fag. That’s the reality. There isn’t. But I have no regrets for being out. None. It’s not like I’m missing out on that much. Being an actor in Hollywood is not that great a job anymore. It’s become the sluttiest job on the planet. It’s not remotely serious. It’s not like we’re talking about Hollywood in the 1970s that I’m missing out on. If we were talking about ‘70s Hollywood, then I’d be killing myself because the product back then was so astonishing even though it was still thought of as commercial cinema. I’m not that upset not to be in Ocean’s 15 or whatever.

Gavin Creel, who is so remarkable as the lead in the revival of Hair—he plays Claude—just gave an interview and came out. He said that if it hurts his career so be it, that he’d rather have a life than a career.

I’d definitely rather have a life, too. He’s right. I find it’s made me much more interesting because it’s forced me to find alternative means of employment. It forced me to become a writer. It forced me to live in France. It forced me to work in Italy. It forced me to go to Russia. It forced me to write my own script about Oscar Wilde I hope to get made one day.

You’re even on the masthead of Vanity Fair as a contributing editor.

I know. Who does one have to fuck to get OFF that masthead? He’s such a weird character, that [Vanity Fair Editor in Chief] Graydon [Carter]. He’s certainly not the buffoon he looks like. This is the most amazing thing I found out about him. I was once staying at a hotel and I was in the room directly under his. He is an amazing fuck. And you can quote me on this. The screams coming from the woman were some of the purest sounds of pleasure I’d ever heard. And there I was sitting alone in my room unfucked. Suddenly it all made sense. That messy hair of his that I always thought was buffoon hair was buffoon hair hiding a monster cock. The next day I went down to breakfast and Graydon came in and I thought to myself, well, now I understand why you are always acting so entitled and walking on air even though you’re rather fat. It’s because grazing the grass between your legs is this appendage of yours. I did rather politely tell him that morning that I thought he was a very good fuck.

Perhaps that’s why you’re still on the masthead.

Hmmm ... you think?

Irreverence is certainly one of your calling cards. Maybe that irreverence—coupled with your erudition—is why Channel Four in England hired you to be a host for a series of travel documentaries, which is yet another aspect of this varied career you’ve been forced to have. You’ve done shows about the explorer Sir Richard Burton and another two retracing Lord Byron’s journeys in Albania and Greece. Did you swim the Hellespont—or the Dardanelles, as it’s called today—like Byron did when he was inspired to do it by reading about Leander swimming toward the priestess Hero? From Leander to Byron to Everett—that’s quite a lineage.

I attempted to swim it, yes. But we were forced to stop because of the tankers. They wouldn’t let us go on. We were stopped by the traffic controllers of some sort. Channel Four wanted a bit of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll in the documentaries and it was difficult to know how to incorporate that in a travel documentary. Sir Richard Burton’s life was all about sexuality in Africa so that sort of fit. And then I thought that Byron had a bit of all that in his day.

Did you identify with his lover Lady Caroline Lamb’s description of him as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”?

A bit. We looked at him in those terms, yes. But then we looked at his life in Greece and Albania where he was a serious revolutionary—as serious as Che Guevara or Bolivar.

He is considered a bisexual today. He wrote all those poems about his schoolboy days at Harrow. There are those lovely lines: “Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, which whispers friendship will be doubly dear to one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam, and seek abroad the love denied at home.”

In that regard, his saddest love affair was his last one when he went to Greece to escape his girlfriend and he finally fell in love with this boy called Lukas. By this time Byron had turned into a kind of pastiche of himself. Dyed hair. Slightly overweight. And for the first time ever he was rejected. One of his last poems that is seldom ever published is the poem he wrote to Lukas. It’s the saddest poem I’ve ever read about unrequited love. He was ultimately a sweet character, Lord Byron. A sweet man—which is finally a nice way to be remembered.

Kevin Sessums is the author of the New York Times bestseller Mississippi Sissy, a memoir of his childhood. He was executive editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and Allure. He is a contributing editor of Parade. His new memoir, I Left It on Mountain will be published by St. Martins Press.