Conversations with Rupert Everett

[Applause] hi ladies and gentlemen thank you for being here everybody in Hollywood is a multi - er these days but there is no one more deserving of that title than today's guest had to write them down and I'm sure he'll tell me I've missed some but he is an actor a writer a director a novelist a journalist a documentarian a biographer a singer a model amused and activist and a humanitarian it is my great honor to introduce Rupert Everett [Applause] okay let's start at the beginning okay tell us how you became an actor how I became an actor well really stud I loved I went to this it's unusual for people nowadays it's difficult to imagine but when I was a kid we had a local cinema and it was one of those gigantic places and it was called the Embassy Theatre in Braintree in Essex and it had these amazing pink curtains an actor and a queen these curtains were lit from underneath I don't know where the probably people older people remember this and they would just leave a crimson kind of tangerine color and the film which was Mary Poppins it they project it before the curtains were open so it looked like it was coming out of the curtains come I had a completely different vision of the idea I had no idea was coming from behind I thought it was coming through these curtains and they switched open and Julie Andrews came into my life and it was just mind-blowing situation for me and the first bit of acting I did was going straight back to school and telling all my friends that my parents who were rather boring middle US military people weren't my parents that I was actually Julie Andrews daughter she was busy filming in South Africa I don't know why did they decide Africa and she put me with this very dreary family I was making the best no you were sent away to prep school at age seven that's boarding school which you know the British upper classes do we were just talking about that you know I went to boarding school at 11 and it's very difficult but once you got to you're in a more senior school and the fourth in Yorkshire that's where you really you know started to act in school plays I mean you have said I don't know if you were being slightly facetious you know it looked like I might be a homosexual in there for perhaps I should learn to act no what was the truth in that and how did you go well I was at a monastery a very strict not very strict area Catholic monastery and it was it's very sporty and they played a lot of rugby and there was a theater run by a teacher and all the oddballs in the school really congregated in the theater and funnily enough I met her I made friends with two people both of them still friends with me now and one of them Julian who's in my film we left amber forth together we both went to the same drama school and we were both in the same first West End production together but when we were at this school we became really the Lunt's of the amber fourth stage he played all the boys parts and I played all the girls and I made myself this amazing dressing room on the fire escape and I got a mirror with with lights around it and like skeletons for weak things I had tons of telephones and I'd have pretend conversations which actually we're very prescient they were exactly like the conversations ended up being with Italian agents and we'd write each other letters there was a there was an inter house kind of letter system in our school and we'd write each other letters from Franco Zeffirelli people like that and then we then we both saved up our pocket money and got this man called PCR which is a magazine that shows what acting stuff is going on and once we saw there was a film called the boys from Brazil so I was at this point playing Mary Stewart and Julianne was playing Queen Elizabeth the first and so we wrote the producers the boys through Brazil saying we are boys and we're currently preparing in Mary Stewart such and before college and we'd like to be in the film and so that's how that's really how our careers got started we didn't get into that yeah yeah now did you apply to multiple drama schools I mean I applied to two drama schools the Royal Academy in London and the Central School and I got into both ends of matter of fact and went to the Central School and can you talk a little bit about what happened there was there for the whole course and had to leave because of insubordination what exactly I think because I really misunderstood the nature of things a lot because there was show business in the real world looked like they're on the same track but actually and this it took me years to discover they're not on the same track at all show business is like being in the military which was the world I'd tried to escape actually had gone back into a an organization that is just as militaristic at the same time the 70s were happening and it was disco drugs gays were the thing I mean when you think about it especially in America gays and black people we were we were we were the stars of the 1970s and so being gay and young then even though actually in inning that it had only been legal honor to be gay for seven years but you felt the world was your oyster I had no inkling that show business was running on a completely different set of rules in a different Constitution and so I got to drama school and I just really was was very rebellious because it was it was it was fair it was very dreary at drama school too and I didn't Majan drama school was going to be full of cross-dressing and orgies everyone experimenting with everything and it just and it wasn't like that at all and and I and I imagine showbusiness was going to be like that as well and so I had a kind of collision really with show business for the at least the first 10 years of my career is there anything you did learn at Central though that you took with you wait to Glasgow tongues in a way I mean we did we did the old fashioned training is an amazing training it's it they teach you things that you never learn anymore the kind of a breathing technique called rib reserve which was really the kind of thing that I mean nobody does know but it's a it's a amazing technique and and I had a couldn't say CH is properly I learned how to do that and we did tons of plays and so it yes there was something great about it looking back but it was it was bureaucratic in the way in a boring kind of post-war lean-to building is kind of way but you then found a different kind of training which did suit you at the citizens theater in Glasgow so how did you end up there well in those days in our country you don't have it the same here and but we our Union situation was much more complex than your one we had to get a union card to start with and there were only 40 or something given out per year which is an extraordinary thought now yeah and there must have been about I think 200 drama students per year coming out of the drama schools and each repertory company around the country had a union card or two union cards sometimes to give out and so for the young actors coming out of the schools it was very very competitive because without the union card you couldn't work and you could only work you had to work once you've got the union card for 50 weeks in the provincial theatre and only at that point could you take part in television cinema or the commercial theatre so this of course was something we all complained about but in fact it was a wonderful thing too because your real training happened to you in some either good rep repertory company or some terrible repertory company either either one was actually just as good but I went to one which has been my favorite which was a very very an incredible theater and actually in in a way the only part of my show business journey that really has lived up to everything that I thought it was going to be it was called the citizens theater in Glasgow and it was a famous theatre throughout Europe and it was a kind of very design oriented place which was alien to the British theatre actually at the time and and I spent really all my theatrical career started from there and I went back and back and most of the plays I did commercially were there in the end from there as well and the director this man called Philip Rous and the designer he's he's really been was my mentor I think on everything more on him later so for many of us the first time we heard of Rupert was when he was on stage in London in another country I saw it when I was still at school and every teenage girl in England thought he was the most handsome boy they'd ever seen myself included obviously he was on stage with Colin Firth and then oh I wasn't a show you know I thought okay so who was in that initial production I was sure I saw big I was in the stage with Kenneth Branagh not calling first benefit over the play after I left at the show and then Daniel day-lewis to go with the show my part and then Colin Firth to go over from him and that's an interesting thing they always say to you if you ever get a hit in the theatre you should never ever ever leave it because it's a gamble someone else will take over your role and do it much better that's exactly what happened to me because I was the king of the pile yeah when I started out and they just went streaming on ahead of me after they took over the show now what I'm unclear about is the gestation of the play to the movie how did that come about was the movie already in the works well the play was such a hit the play was a great hit it lasted for about three years and it was a friend of mine one of my best friends who produced actually the film I my film now produced it in London and then we together we Alan Parker was going to make into a movie and so that didn't actually happen Alan didn't do it and in the end American history but it was about two years later the movie happened and did you have to re audition or where you offered it no I was really it was my project finally I'd taken I'd taken the play to the West End producer initially because it was in a little tiny theater outside of London yeah and and so I was really in the construction of it and so casting the other role was part of my one of one of the things I had some control over and I'd seen Colin in another country in the ruin my role in the play and I developed enormous crush on him so you've gotta get rid of I won through and got Colin and then we started working on it on the film and my crush just turned off like that and I went from crusted loathing him we were really bad enemies for that whole period but then we became great great friends after that she disputes that and says now you know I love the idea of a feud is that really true Otakon Belinda phew I was just very nasty it wasn't a feud I was just I was right because I was a nasty piece of wood I was I was very territorial and and you know I I I was I was in some respects quite a nasty piece of wood and presumably his talent was already well evident that yes no be very jealous oh yeah yeah so how did that film change things for you well both Colin denied the weird thing is that the film here over here in America was distributed by Tom and Michael at Orion classics and they're one of the few organizations are still going now and they are Sony classics so it's an amazing actually thrill and a kind of full circle thing to have had them do my first ever film and this one now it's extraordinary cuz there's very few people in a executive lair who's still doing the same thing and they're they're an amazing couple and they brought me in calling over to promote the film and it was um it was quite successful so that was your first taste of Hollywood no because like before the film came out I've been in a miniseries called Princess Daisy and we shot that here in the goona Beach oh but what were your first impressions coming here to promote a movie well my first impressions were doing doing Princess Daisy I knew about the Chateau Marmont I said I want to say this out of my life thinking the chatty element was going to be I don't know full of glamour but yeah that period it was the most extraordinary hurtle I remember arriving on my first day and almost wanted to commit suicide that every room had a little kitchenette with these horrible scuzzy cupboards with old thick white china you had two teacups to two sources two plates and they kind of draw the pulled out I mean from nothing had changed since the 1950s in that hotel the carpet was that kind of old there'd been tons of you would just smell the broken dreams in that hotel and but then the Marlboro Man was outside and and it was an extraordinary you know extra Hollywood is so different to how you imagine it because of course you get there and if you don't know anyone you're like in a kind of bubble completely on your own you don't know how to get anywhere go anywhere you're normally stuck on your first trip where they leave you and this idea of it being you know kind of a Hall of Fame and all over the place is completely it's a completely different type of experience yeah but once I got used to it I liked it very much so back in the UK he followed up another country where the film called dance with a stranger about the lost woman to be hung in the UK at the age of 28 and I was Ruth Ellis and she was played by miranda Richardson in her first breakout film role correct and she killed him can you talk a little bit about that I mean it was a huge success for both of them certainly cementing your initial success in another country it was a really difficult experience for me and it's where I really began to come up against the reality of show business the director and I didn't get along at all well and I think or thought it was because I was playing a straight role and he knew I was gay and he wanted to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse these tiny little scenes where I had to either kiss or make love to Ruth Ellis and I could tell what he really thought and this is actually I think really the essence of homophobia if there is homophobia in Hollywood it's not about hatred or aggression it was about a kind of boys club attitude who just couldn't believe that a gay person would have the first notion about how to make love to a woman and I was sitting there opposite this man hauling me over the coals and he was a big fat slob II thing and I had at this point already had wonderful affairs with some of the world's most beautiful women what is what is wrong with this picture okay I suede this game if there's no problem with me playing the scenes and he just would never let me go and we developed this incredibly abrasive aggressive relationship and of course I being 22 had no idea how to control myself and as I've said already I was already perched on the verge of being quite difficult and that kind of pushed me into I don't mean to sound like Serena Williams but it pushed him in schools he kind of pushed me into going too far and I was at loggerheads with this guy and and in the end I lost because I think my reputation was kind of blown because of it but it came from this thing that that is is a kind of this I don't know whether it's the same now but certainly in the 80s and the 90s and right at the beginning this this boy's club notion that a gay person could not play a straight role and of course every straight actor is playing gay roles and you know getting Oscars and winning and they can do everything but it just doesn't work the other way and I think that is the thing that has been most frustrating in a career and accuracy that prevails to this day really well I think things are definitely shifting I mean everything is everything is up for grabs today so things things are definitely on the move but yes it is because even in the last few weeks there's been a scandal I don't know whether you've heard about it here but Disney had been making a film and they cast a straight guy for the gay role and obviously everyone in England who's gay in the vehicle statue or even actually highest at sure then this guy is probably frustrated about it but I think we shouldn't be happy in just playing the game rules why can't the gay guy play the straight rule and the straight guys playing the gay role why do we have to be confined to playing the gay role so I think it is it's a frustrating situation still in many respects yeah now your first American film was hot sapphire perhaps student not one of the best reviews have reviewed in your career but you did work with Bob Dylan I work with Bob Dylan yeah actually from my I was I think I was very good in that film yeah it was one of the films I think I was misunderstood it you know all actors think they've been misunderstood non-stop in their careers but I felt I had this friend called John Taylor at the time who is the bass guitarist of Duran Duran and I think I did an amazingly accurate yeah take off with him but nobody noticed so and and and they're probably right and it was a strange experience and the the first director I killed because poor old Richard Marquand died in a parking lot during the Edit now Bob Dylan's not known for his conversational well not skills but you know he's not a great conversationalist he's a bit of a mumbler how did you get on with him I adored him and we had such a laugh together because he was he is so dysfunctional or was he didn't have any hours so his life was he might be up until 11 a.m. in the morning and had three hours sleep and get up at 2:00 and stay up until 9:00 and go to go to sleep till midnight and then get up and stay up until 4:00 in the morning have another nap so working in in the in the military schedule of a movie having together before he'd just been he just normally spent the whole that was just going to bed time so he was constantly in a daze one time we were doing a scene together in a limousine and sometimes you but you all know you do if the if you're not doing the scene with the car actually driving we were in the studio and they were just bouncing the car around having lights flashing by outside and stuff like that and we were sitting in the back of the studio playing this in the in the back of the limousine playing this you know kind of rock and roll scene about you know I loved that track man and although I'm using you man you know you're gonna be the tub and anyway we played the scene for about the whole afternoon and but Bob thought we were driving back to the hotel so when we opened the cut the limousine door to get our whist hotel but you never knew with him whether he was doing it on purpose or he was doing it to wake you up but it was so funny and he had these little tiny thin legs and always were a big parka jacket with a hood and say like and this kind of hair he was very very funny moment of pop stardom you recorded now after that yeah right and we managed but so I'm Simon Napier Bell who was a famous music manager and Sven golly in London at the time so what went wrong there there was I don't know if I think first of all being on my own because when you when you and when you're an artist in that world on your own and you what happens is every weekend you go on these you go to festivals or TV shows and there was another band with my record label called living in a box and they were four of them and I had such fun where everything was fine when I was with them but on your own you know you have to have nerves of steel actually to be on your own in it's like being a stand-up comedian Hershey as opposed to an actor and you have to know when you're getting into that sort of thing that you're not with anybody else you're on your own and that I couldn't I was too conflicted and and and remembered the other thing that had happened at this point in our lives is that AIDS had happened and I was very lucky in the sense that in eventually I didn't have a contract it but you know the the the 70s everybody had you know had tons of sex there was no way of finding out if you had HIV or not and suddenly to be thrust a in front of the camera when you thought God maybe tomorrow someone's going to come up to you say what's that on your face and you suddenly going to be outed and then going even further and being on your own making records I think for me the strain of that and that's that's also what made life very difficult at that point because you know we lived in a kind of terror situation I don't know if anyone's old enough to remember that period but I mean it really was a terrifying terrifying time and you saw friends and the disease you know even people who get the disease now don't look like people looked when it first came out you know it looked like something absolutely terrifying and so even when you had friends and you had to deal with your friends having it it was it was also terrifying and I think being in front of the camera and being looked at with that in the background of your life was for me it took me a long time to looking back to recover from I didn't really notice at the time because you're just keeping going but it was um it was very stressful I remember on the TV show I did Princess Daisy I was shooting a scene in England and something bit me on and I came up in this lump and you can actually see if you watch the film I just I'd gone into the train I thought this is this is it and I'd gone back and played the scene I just couldn't even bothered to play the scene at oh yeah well but I should see if you knew that I just lost the plots completely and so I think that was and also obviously in terms of music I wasn't good enough so you know all those things come together when you think about it yeah now around the time that you came out which was 1989 you also made the comfort of strangers in which you were you know before that really all right right yeah but yeah I mean everybody knew better but wasn't that sort of the official time but but anyway nonetheless you were you know still playing a straight man fabulously in the comfort of strangers mmm with Helen Mirren Christopher Walken and Natasha Richardson in Venice but not Venice I don't know if anybody's seen that it's a beautiful language film based on a McEwan's novel directed by the great Paul Schrader and how was that sort of experience because you you had talked about having had a difficult professional relationship with you know Natasha who of course had lives no longer with us but how do you look back at that film no but I didn't really have a difficult relationship with Natasha I was very good friend yes yes and you've said that you weren't terribly close no we weren't we weren't particularly close but I don't think we had a difficult relationship yeah I was I was very good friends with her husband and her father and and and not such good friends with her but that experience was amazing Porsche Raider is an incredible director and that my coming out hadn't happened in 1989 in 1986 a bit because in 1986 I to France and that's really where everything kind of changed in that sense for me in 1989 Paul came to see the vortex to play that I was in directed by the guy Philip Rous from the Glasgow citizens and he offered me the film a couple of strangers and we made it in Venice and it was it was great Helen and Christopher and and Natasha and I had a just a forbus in the film and it was a it was a wonderful experience really looking back yeah it's beautiful all right well far it's an amazing filler mesh in its way it's one of the I mean you could no one would ever make a film like that days but it's a it was an amazing the weird film yeah now ready-to-wear must have been a fantastic experience with Robert Altman ready-to-wear was quite a few years later ready-to-wear was 1994 and it was it was a it was a difficult experience I think because Bob Oakland was not very well he'd had a heart attack I think two weeks before shooting started and he making film about fashion is a very very difficult thing and I don't think he'd got his head around really the intricacies and the the amount people would really look at it through a microscope in terms of the just the technical thing of what fashion really was like and how it actually operated so I think he was always on the back foot and he realized that kind of at the beginning of the film that because he had his his son who's a good designer but he's not in the design and the look of it was just not they didn't bother read to look too closely what fashion was actually like so I think in one sense that film could have been wonderful but but was was less good than then everyone had hoped but it's wonderful working for Altman because he has such a an incredible way of shooting and you know these cameras are either all corners of the room and you make up your own dialogue and some of it was absolutely amazing because we shot at real fashion parties where all the actors had to move around with the real fashionistas and the camera you'd suddenly find yourself with the camera and you'd have to come up with one of your little scenes and that was a very exciting in great okay fast-forward a few more years to a little film called my best friend's wedding which obviously changed everything to you here and although that film is more than twenty years old it more than stands the test of time and I wonder if you've seen it recently and and what that experience was like for you it's a it's it's 20 years old last year 1938 yeah at nine yeah this year and it's I haven't seen it recently but I loved it and I loved PJ Hogan and his wife very much and it was really a pirouette in show business I suppose I started getting on with everyone much better at that point and I'd never really worked with the director not really who adored me and I adored him we've really gone well and he called me his De Niro and I called him my my Marty Scorsese and and we had and the other actors were wonderful Julia was great Cameron was amazing Dermot was lovely and it was just a very lucky period for me because I got on so well with PJ and he kept writing me new material and and so it was a kind of one of those dreamlike experiences where everything suddenly turned into green lights all the way for me that was that time to working with the right people or had someone ever taken you aside and said real pay you have to stop saying some of these things you know because radio on paper when I got the role I felt it was like the end of the road and by the way I wasn't nasty as a person for the most part I wasn't the nasty side was really a little bit earlier yeah all right I don't think I was a particularly nasty in doing the Paul Schrader movie so I think the one that says this about yourself yes anyway but no because on paper the role looked like it was a very kind of dead end role it was one one and a half scenes in a yeah and it wasn't a great there was nothing in the role and I'd thought um I thought it was kind of the end of the road in a way but once I got to to meet PJ and to know him then then it just kept changing and he kept writing all this other material for me but I think it answers your question no I think just that getting on with people and and and I don't know PJ was so you just you know we clicked very very well and and the opportunity was there and I clicked very well with Julia as well and that was important and and so great chemistry and we had good chemistry and a good laugh and and so it was a it was a wonderful opportunity in the end and PJ and I we made another film together afterwards called unconditional love and which i think is a wonderful movie yeah but never got released yeah yeah why not what happened with it well that was part of then the kind of downturn for me because after my best friend's wedding I was taken up by the community as being a possibly a new type of star that could bring in you know a potentially 20 million strong audience of gays and lesbians and transgender so I think I got a lot of opportunity for that and so then III did the film with Madonna the next best thing and it tanked and the moment it tanked I think made people sit up and look twice and meanwhile I'd made with PJ unconditional love and it had gone fairly extensively over budget and then that too was pulled before it was shown and so for me that was kind of you know the end of the road slightly so what was your feeling then after that film was panned so randomly as it was cruelly so I thought well I didn't you know I didn't really notice at first the the real RAM the ramifications I think when when something bursts like that it takes a few years for you to really understand what's going on because I'd got quite a lot of work out of all this and so the work kept going and and I didn't really notice what had happened until a couple of years later really and and then it was like everything just started slightly going wrong for me in a way and I wasn't getting the rose and then it just literally stopped dead and that was when I started writing what was the first thing you wrote at that I wrote my first book called red carpets another banana skins and and then I started that we were now about 2006 and we and it brings us up to starting work on this film and since my career kind of stopped dead in its tracks I thought I'm just not really accept this and so I thought I'd write myself a role that I could you know worm my way back in with and so that was really the initial motivation for me to play Oscar Wilde yes but we have bypassed your two big important Oscar Wilde movies The Importance of Being Earnest and an ideal husband right so talk about those two films both directed by Oliver Parker both excellent both Miramax Films I mean were you involved at all in getting those off the ground I wasn't involved in getting the ideal husband off the ground no I was it was I was approached by them and I we did it and we had a lovely time doing it and so we then had the idea like all of us together really to do The Importance of Being Earnest and that was also in that period I think the importance being is probably in 2005 or something like that and 2002 The Importance of Being Earnest an ideal husband 90 99 right and then we also did together the st. Trinian's for fun have come here but we did two of those a man and a woman I wish I play a man and a woman and and that was that's kind of it in in a nutshell at what point did you start thinking I need to play Oscar Wilde when did that well see you'd first Germany around that time that that I wasn't really getting after those jobs after The Importance of Being Earnest I didn't really get any particularly good jobs that I wanted and the kind of roles I was offered were just you know it's it's difficult it's difficult even when you're successful to try and broaden your game really because normally you're just asked to play the same thing over and over again but but things really kind of tanked and bottom down in a way for me and I just thought what kind of role should I try and play and it felt to me that something that I could write and really put everything of myself into as well would be the story of Wilde in exile who for me is a kind of patron saint figure or a Christ figure almost mm-hmm patron saint of fallen celebrities and no not so much for it yes for celebrities yes I suppose and but more than that the patron saint of the gay liberation movement which is really what he is the the road to gay liberation really started with the wild scandal and wilds death in 1900 so I think he's a very important punctuation point for us living in the lgbtq+ community now and for me I think a historical context in life is incredibly valuable and I think one of the things that the virtual world is missing is any context historically and now we're all like goldfish swishing around the bowl once and and that's about as far as I as our historical sense takes us to a year or two ago you know the idea of an old movie is screened to not scream yeah yeah and and I think this is very difficult it makes things it makes it very difficult for us all to deal with life as it is actually absolutely I feel was there a point when I mean obviously you were offered all of those roles of you know up across up across handsome men I mean was there a point when you tired of those sort of offers to be honest no I've never I've never been offered I've normally taken work that's been often only I think you know only in a few tiny periods of my life have I been offered many alternative sources of work I've normally taken the work that's that's come to be honest I'm curious how you're received by kids in America because you've made an awful lot of family films you know Dunston checks in that's one of my favorite film yeah yeah okay I came on on the set of that but what's that I mean wasn't yeah yeah a long time ago but but was there ever any intention to broaden into those sorts of films or those were just offers that came along with Inspector Gadget was another it's better gadget was one it wasn't such a successful happen enough to me no I would love to have done more kids films I think it doesn't checks in I think is a kind of wonderful movie in a way and I really enjoyed working with the orangutan was I think one of my favorite scene partners ever because that orangutan was just amazing and they were so trained and you could when you acted with the orangutan you could do a four-minute scene with the orangutan and you gave it or the board the trainer behind you gave it as little movement so you said I'd say we're in you pool and you could do all these different things and you could play the whole scene and there was there was one Sam and he had his sister who's his standing and he was he was such fun and I used to wear a little front piece wig in the thing and he would watch the hairdresser coming up to me and doing this to the wig I need to sit there and at the beginning of the scene you had to take control of the orangutan and the trainer's would give you the that you have okay Sam don't get goofy you go like that don't get goofy was a sign that he was going to have to start the scene so I'd go Sam don't get goofy and he go okay and he already started disrespecting me and at one point the hairdresser had gone and I'd gone don't get goofy and they said iron action and Sam just looked at me and came up to the wig obviously there was no better choice to play Prince Charming in in Shrek two and three than you how did that happen that was one of my great lucky windfalls because being in the Shrek films was an amazing piece of luck because I didn't know whether they didn't pay so well no but in those days or the Shrek franchise it was everyone got paid really good money and the work is you can do it anywhere in the world if you were in Hong Kong they'll hook you up to a satellite and and the films were amazing and the tours we went on were amazing and honestly it was that was the best job I ever had yeah really the best job it's such a laugh and and also because they were so good the film's it made it even even more less guilty making an audience member wanted me to ask about stage beauty I'm not sure who mentioned that's one of your favorite films it is yeah yeah oh thank you very much thing did you enjoy it as much as she did I loved making stage fancy and it was it was really did it went done really badly everywhere for some reason but I I really enjoyed it you know but why do you think that was - actually I think essentially because they tried to it was about this well drag actor and he was not heterosexual in real and they've made the story into a kind of heterosexual love story and I think people at some level found that unbelievable and/or untrue and so I think it it was slightly hoisted by his own petard in a way from Beth what do you know now that you wish you had known at the beginning of your career oh I know one thing and it's to do with and it's to do with directors I think and I learnt it from working with myself as a director because making my film quite often I didn't manage to perform what I wanted to perform because I was so busy trying to do everything else sometimes I really slipped up and when I was editing the film and you've got all the material and I knew the things that I was trying to achieve in the acting and I could see you know through the in all the rushes what I wasn't achieving and I obviously cared about my performance a lot I could you know with intensive editing and moving and moving things around and cuts and things I could make I could build my performance back into the performance it should have been and at that point and when you come in to an edit the editor normally does a does a does a a run on all the performances but quite a lot of that the editors choice is made on whether the bird is singing in the background or the trocars not going past or something's happening and quite often that that editors choice is quite flat from the actors point of view and we act as we always go to films and things like that and say God why did they choose that that take is um do you remember that one I did it was fantastic and and I reckon that that's true because unless the director really likes you he's got so many things to do he hasn't got time to go through your performance with the tooth comb he'll leave it to do an edit and and will never question or think about how he could make it like 60 or 70 percent better and if the if the director doesn't like you then you're basically because he's never going to bother so I think my the only thing I you know whatever make the direction like you you were living in Paris for quite some time and you know made several European films I mean what was that period like for you and and what did that do for you professionally and personally that period oh well that's that was my first really clever idea I think in in 1989 in Europe European cinema was meant to be born as a kind of as a form on its own and I had been here for quite a few years on and off trying to get jobs and not really succeeding and I suddenly thought why did I really not go to the Hollywood try the Hollywood rewind I go to Europe and try and be a pioneer European film star so I moved to France in 1986 and of course the European cinema wasn't really ready to happen the French of incredibly nationalistic and protective of their market they there was a kind of co-production type of thing that wasn't really terribly modern that you'd find yourself working with the Yugoslavian actor speaking a little Yugoslavia knew be speaking English and someone else would be speaking French and and it just never really worked out but I I went to France I made quite a few films in Italy I made three or four films in France I made a couple and I learned those languages and I think it was the main no not really and that was amazing for me really and also what coming coming in at the tail end of that amazing period in Italy I think was the thing that that really made me if my films any good it's because of meeting all those people meeting and anti Ferretti meeting Piero Tosi people probably don't mean much but there the business there's an aesthetic depth in in those Italian movies from the 50s 60s 70s and 80s that is unbelievable Janny Cuarenta is an amazing production designer danila Donati all these characters who made Visconti and De Sica and Sergio Leone all these incredibly textured films that really leave behind the rest of the world in terms of how films look and I think so that was an incredibly important part of my development definitely for making my film yeah I mean did languages come effortlessly to you because now we have apps to learn them on which is so easy they did then they don't anymore they can they come at a certain age languages come easily to you I think after a bit your brain stops being linguistic so yeah yeah yeah yeah it's true so moving on to your new film the Happy Prince if you haven't seen it it's released in Los Angeles in New York on October the 10th and then will go wide it is a masterpiece and tour de force performance hit the reviews in the UK have been fantastic I'm sure they will be here also I mean it was incredibly difficult to raise the money there's a fantastic documentary called born to be wild I hope that it will become available here which tells the long you know arduous journey but you know what kept you going throughout and I know it's difficult I mean it's an emotional piece to watch you know the film and knowing your journey I don't know what kept me going to be honest just because it was such a long journey and I'm fairly flakey person by traditionally and I think probably just desperation kept me going because it was such a long period and in the middle of it I was about 55 years old this is not a good time for actors even if they're doing well really because you're not one thing or the other you're not young and you're not old and so I was in the middle of this process my career was like I don't know the light at the end of a receding tunnel and offering about two or three times I thought the film was happening and I'd cancel it some work that I have and then it collapsed and it was at a certain point I thought to myself God if I don't make this film Who am I and that's a horrible it's not a it's not an ideal state of mind but I think it was that State of Mind that kept me pushing through I thought I've got to I have to make the film that or else you know I might as well be dead and and so and so and also because filmmaking is very enthusiastic and optimistic thing we live on optimism most of the time so one something happens one day anything over there you go that's it yeah I'm good I'm off again and lots of those kind of things happened as well nope nearly every actor who directs themselves say they would never repeat it again and yet you seem to have pulled it off with incredible a prom it's such a you know creatively directed movie well you're clearly your time in Europe you know influence it enormous Lee I mean how did you I mean once you're actually you know you had the money and you're thinking about the director I mean what was your vision for it had you had that vision all along or did that come together as the movie came together no I knew always how I wanted to make it and also the service and how I had to make it because of the constraints of the budget if I'd had you know 40 or 50 million pounds maybe I'd have made something more conventional and more you know with with camerawork and and using places and sets in a more conventional way but I I had a very limited means and also I didn't want to make something quite that traditional I I I loved the films of the dardan brothers in Belgium and they make films they're urban film so they're not the same as mine but they make films that look as if they're kind of cheaply shot documentaries in fact they're in heavily heavily choreographed brilliantly choreographed hand films films and and I and a lady called Andrea Arnold also developed from them her version of doing those kind of films and so I knew that I wanted to try and make a kind of Visconti meet CCTV kind of aesthetic yeah with with a with a documentary style and with with some face-off between the the act of the protagonist and the camera which I have at the beginning and the end of my film when I talk to the camera and hopefully not son to wanky but you know establish a relationship between the camera and the film that the camera becomes an actual physical observer of the thing because once the actor looks into the camera's lens there is there should be or hopefully a contact established and then the camera follows the actor down into wherever he goes so that was um really what I wanted to try and how I wanted to try and make the film and I was I think a director's real work happens anyway I think before making before shooting stars because he has to choose the other people and if he chooses the wrong people that's how the film unravels because the wrong person is just not going to be able to do the thing that the director wants and I chose great people and first of all I chose an amazing DP who just was like he's like a big rugby player and he just pulled me through the whole thing and we were really on the same page about everything and the production designer was an old friend of mine and the costume designer was an old friend of mine and I knew exactly what what I wanted to get from them and I had amazing actors who and all of them right across the board right to the smallest parts I coerced everybody I knew into the film and so I didn't need to make any effort with any of the actors they would they just effortlessly inhabited their roles yeah so in in one sense I was incredibly lucky and a great editor and a great musician composer so Garrett who I discovered when you can post Betty Blue starring Beatrice Dale who is also in the film that was another huge film of the 80s for those of us around there but the incredible thing to me is still the fact that without your old pal Colin Firth it wouldn't have got it right there you go I mean which is so mind-blowing release do you really call him frothy yes so talk a little about your conversations because you know he was attached and then years went by and but he always stuck with you he did I when I first wrote the film which is it must have been about 2007 what you do is you have a reading and Tom and Emily and Colin came and read the film and Tom Wilkinson Emily Watson and I got them all three of them to sign these pieces of paper through their agencies saying we will take part in the film which is what always happens these pieces they were not worth the paper they're written off because yeah mostly people managed to back out if the movie ever gets going which normally they don't and then the years went by Colin's career skyrocketed after a single man and I meanwhile was parroting around Europe trying to get deals promising Colin Firth and saying things that you know I spoke to Colin this morning he said which was all lies yeah and and then all the deals were written with Colin only was provided Colin took part so I was absolutely desperate I didn't know what would happen if he backed out and he never did so the film really is made thanks to him but were you surprised at that very because you know especially in show business today in the old school of show business everyone did everyone favors but nowadays show business has become a much crueler machine and you know nobody can nobody would pour a bottle of water over you if you were on fire on the whole nowadays so I think Colin's behavior was incredibly unusual for today's for today's world and I don't think anyone has done anything for me like that in my life so so generous and so huge I mean for me huge so but it wasn't entirely a favor Collin says in the born to be wild documentary it was one of the greatest scripts he's ever read you can imagine no no I'm sorry it is a fantastic script and you can imagine how many scripts you is know you know give yourself credit where credit is due no but anyway he was he came up he was amazing and so were the others to Emily and Tom you know sticking with me and and doing the film and Collin I he was being paid a certain amount of money now I had to take off his money from him and he accepted that too he was amazing really amazing Wow so you were securing financing from assorted different European countries and that was contingent on shooting in those places yes so how incredibly difficult was that you had such a short shoot anyway racing around Europe it wasn't that short of shoot we had about a 50 days straight which was actually in a way quite a lot but yes the main problem was that the film had to be shot in Germany were Oscar Wilde didn't go and so and in Bavaria in Germany as well which is a very rich state so every bit of architecture is remodeled and sandblasted and wonderfully preserved and completely unusable if you wanted to you know create a CD in nineteenth-century Parisian environment but finally I found this area in the north of Bavaria called Franconia where nearby Reuter Varga came from and I found these three old castles and in the old castles ivory we used them like a studio and almost every room that of the film is in one of those castles so it was very lucky that was another lucky thing so your acting and directing and spending hours in makeup every day presumably I mean what was that transformational process for you like daily not it didn't take very long to be honest I had a set of teeth with extra bits on the side that made my face a bit fatter I had this amazing fat suit maybe I feel having that in your mouth fine okay like that you had swollen gums mm-hmm and and it didn't really took a very short time by the end getting ready so that wasn't too difficult and and really that making the film was in a way the easiest part easier or less stressful than that than the on-again-off-again pre-production but you say no that you didn't actually enjoy the process was too much to think about there's too much to think about and also because we were you know every day was packed with work and if we didn't do it in the day like most independent films you just don't do the scene that's the scene gone so you you're spending the whole day just pushing and pushing and pushing and so that's not really fun exactly mm-hm now it's part of the preparation for the film you also played Oscar Wilde in David hares play the Judas Kiss right one your best actor award but from what's on stage in London I mean obviously that's a different period of Oscars life but you felt that you had to do that to show these investors that you guys know this oh that was even before I said that I did the play because I was I had no investors mm-hmm and I thought well maybe if I could show myself playing Oscar Wilde I could get some interest and so David hare gave me permission to do the play and Robert Fox who did another country with me put the play on and at the Hampstead Theatre Club and it was luckily very very successful and I got the BBC to come on board my film then and Lionsgate and that's how the whole thing got started how did the experience of playing him in that film in the form y'all know enormous Lee I think if you can be in a play playing a character before doing a film it's wonderful because I did that play for about a year on and off and no Toronto under you yes and on tour in the UK and it was I really knew the role or my character anyway by the time I finished doing that so by the time I got to the movie I didn't really need to think too much about my approach to the role something that was very useful yeah and the other incredible part of the film is that much of the dialogue is in French and obviously he's fluent now I mean was that a conscious decision early on that you would do that well I thought it I think it's too late in in people speaking English with French accent oh yeah and and and also I was very much still involved in this idea of making a European film and it seems that I thought my film is naturally European it's made in lots of different European countries it speaks naturally in European languages and I was excited to try and to make a European a very European film is there anything you would have done differently tons I mean I think every film is like a work in progress and you know you you can only do what you can do and you know even we had no money left the post-production so it was edited in ten seconds you know compared to what it couldn't yet and I could have edited it for much longer and come up with many different things but so you have to kind of be fatalistic about that you can do what you can do I think old movies must be really a work in progress somehow and do you regard Oscar Wilde differently now no I have that III had I had a very clear insider my very clear insight into him right from the start and it never really changed funnily enough how emotional was it filming the death scene not very because poor Tom Wilkinson was having a kind of he couldn't breathe and so he gives the old God of the faint and I was gonna say don't think steal this from me one day just do it just keep going so go sit down and I was getting her a new doctor we got to get going Tom yeah and then he had this hat and I said Tommy you meant to put you out of your do I have to wear that thing and so he was uh pretty so ill who knows and so it wasn't that sad it was it was it was they're worried but it was a fight in the air yeah he was amazing yep so here you are back on top again you see everything's coming up roses for you how does it feel well I feel good it's very nice you know coming to LA again after all this time and seeing everything chained no more hamburger Hamlet no more blues yeah everything's changed a lot yeah and I'm just kind of getting my bearings you know for us English actors this place is such a it's a place we passed by all through our lives in various different rentals and houses and flats and hotels and so it has a kind of very romantic side you know it's Hollywood after yeah and this it's the place of dreams and so it's uh it's funny to come back after such a long time to see Sunset Boulevard so full of traffic yeah which never was before like they've been plucked out of Chechnya yeah yeah okay so so what's next for you Cindy says is no coward next he's certainly who seems some attention oh you know it's not next for me no no although I love Noel Coward I don't know what's this I'm written in other films I'm trying to get off the ground and what is that it's a story takes place they kind of disco story in the 70s Wow well what you know what about which I know all about and would you direct it I would know you in it I am tell us more oh well that's never happened probably but that's what I'm trying to do the positive force oh yeah well it's just me financing independent movies is really tough yes and and they get more and more expensive too but there are so many more platforms now I don't know other you know what about with the streaming services I mean Netflix of you know making some of my 80 movies this I know but to get to Netflix you know there's it's it's quite difficult to get you know all these people engaged in your work not that easy yeah so whereas it set it said in Paris so it needs to have French money really because that's the only way you can get all the tax reductions so it's all those things are quite complex so who do you think is the audience for the happen Prince because to me I mean it's such a vast audience just for example had a young lift driver yesterday a brilliant young gay guy studying at Harvard and he didn't know who Oscar Wilde was and I told him all about the film he said yes yeah so but yeah and I told him all about it and he said oh you know my partner and I were just saying when he's go and see some films well and I said well you know you draw well yeah his partners in that study in San Diego right now so he's going back to Harvard in January but a brilliant young young guy I'm a phenomenal and doesn't know who or squalled is I mean I'm not surprised I'm you know why necessarily should hey but you know I mean the the audience for this film is surely everybody well I don't know you know you always hope that you that everybody could go and see your film I'm not sure I hope it'd be lovely if everybody went to see amazing yeah yeah I mean looking back do you feel like maybe you're a little ahead of your time Hollywood ahead of my time I don't know I mean you're just so incredibly talented you do you can do anything well I couldn't do this now yeah everything happened to me later than it should have done because I think no I don't think I think I'm after my time because if I'd had been able to write a film in say the it mm I'd manage to make the film with no problems here because I was quite popular and what was so weird is that it that happening when it was too late to me or developing a knack for writing if only I had developed it earlier and tons of opportunity earlier on I had development deals for tons of different ideas and I could never pull them together so that's the weird thing for me having the opportunity not being able to use it losing the opportunity and then be able to do what you hadn't bothered to do before yeah I mean it's also incredible that you didn't get a TV show off the ground you said you had development deals all over the place you had your mr. ambassador yeah series which would have been fantastic and could still happen I mean why did none of those shows come to fruition mr. ambassador was God just to free it's not because it's not that easy yes you know if it was that easy everyone knows so many pilots made and so I made the pilot and I didn't this I I got a showrunner that we didn't get on very well with each other and that's really you didn't that's all in his fantastic but vanished years highly recommend it well you again yes because I guess it was about finding the right people but but were there any other shows that came close besides that one yes I made I wrote a show for channel 4 in London called boyband and it was about four young Liverpool boys starting becoming famous and that nearly got got got picked up and didn't as well you know getting picked up it all this is like it's as random as a sperm hitting an egg and when things do happen you think my god is it's a sheer miracle yep it's incredible yeah when things do you know manage to get forward absolutely you've worked with so many people you've met so many people you've partied with Andy Warhol and David Bowie I mean is there anybody you're still dying to work with to work with yeah and all meet I think meeting people is overrated I think people are much better - if you if you come across someone on the screen or in a record I think it's best to leave them there that's where you'll enjoy them the most but working yet tons of people I like to work with like well I spent a couple of weeks with Richard Dreyfuss recently and I'd love to work with him he said sensation you doing we were on the we would do these film festivals in Italy and him and his wife Ron we went to three film festivals together in different parts of Italy and he is hysterical yeah yeah and him talking about for example the 70s in Hollywood it's just one of the most because the 70s for me is is a period I would love to have been reborn in not it was a very gay friendly yet she'd time but but the Hollywood when Hollywood is run by the inmates of the asylum really in that decade and was an amazing amazingly creative place where the commercial cinema was was eclipsed by the the art cinema they were all the same I mean it was an amazing time I just want to ask you about a quote of yours and whether it still rings true I don't think many actors are that good to be honest I certainly don't think I am I think there's good parts more than good actors that's what I what I meant by that is that I think if there's a good bit of writing a bad actor will look very good and a good actor will look wonderful if there's a bad bit of writing the bad actor will look bad and the good actor will look bad too and I think you can see that play out all the time absolutely I mean a lot of actors now are given the advice to you know write and try and create their own projects I mean we you give people that advice if they're stuck and not finding the parts that satisfy them and all they can get I don't think advice is a very nice thing they all ask for it anyway and because giving advice is just making other people try and be like you it's very controlling nobody could be like you and and taking advice is very submissive and I don't think people should take advice really people have got to find their own way but I think yeah tons of actors now I want to take their own destinies in their hands which is a amazing.i thing and just one final note you said during the play that you had felt the spirit of Oscar Wilde with you what about during the film well I wondered if he'd left me doing it but I don't think he did no I think he I think he stayed with me and I feel a great deal of warmth researching the film and also because there's so many you can find out really everything about someone like Oscar Wilde know what they're doing go to every street corner you can go to every house and that is that that part of the journey for me I loved discovering the villa where he lived in Naples was for me one of the great moments of my life you know walking in the footsteps and stalking them and then thinking ah it was like this and that's and then you really start to feel people yeah and when you just quickly tell them that special thing of his sort of appears that you have the hand story oh I have someone gave me a plaster cast of his hand that was made by a medium that he used to go and visit called the Sybil of Mortimer Street and there's and I've got one of the hands which is amazing where is it it's on my desk in London I don't take you with me everywhere No I'm soon okay and on that note bye-bye [Applause]

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 15,924

Rating: 4.961165 out of 5

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Rupert Everett, Conversations, Lesley O'Toole, The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde, My Best Friend's Wedding, shakespeare in love, An Ideal Husband, Inspector Gadget, A Midsummer night's Dream, Shrek, Stage Beauty, The Next Best Thing, The importance of Being Earnest, Black Mirror

Id: NwE5qhVyjIM

Length: 71min 55sec (4315 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 02 2018