Rupert Everett
/In this post, there is a list of the advanced words and phrases from the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview with Rupert Everett, an actor. Aggie and I have created a podcast explaining the Desert Island Discs interviews called Radio English.
You can listen to the original BBC interview here
Here is the link to my podcast on itunes or just listen to it below:
We discuss these words in the podcast:
lean periods
a mirage
to elbow
to carve out
foxy
frosty
counter-culture
a short fuse
flash in the pan
embittered
a flash in the pan career
up yours!
Notes
Actor, writer, director
0:51 Revealed more than most about how the showbusiness game works
0:53 His razor sharp memoirs
0:57 In which he lit up the stage
Hollywood breakthrough - My best friend’s wedding
Next Best Thing with Madonna
1:16 He argued that the snakes have been as useful as the ladders
Live in a world where the only thing to have is success but failure is wonderful
So thrilling to hear the music and finally be on the show!
DISCUSSING FAILURES
1:41 How do you look back on those lean periods?
Life is a struggle, like being a blade of grass growing between concrete slabs
1:56 When you do throw double 6s, difficult to not get lazy
SUCCESS COMING EARLY
Another country - at age 22!
Success has come to me too early and too late
Would have preferred it in the middle
2:26 It’s a mirage as well, had one success so need to make a bigger one
2:40 Wanting to elbow your way further up
I always had this joke that I’d be 90 in Brighton and run over by a bus on the way to an audition
DIRECTING YOURSELF
Really enjoyed it - knew what I wanted to do
In the lunch break everybody really reveals themselves to each other
BEEN TO DESERT ISLAND BEFORE AS A DISC
Cressida Dick (We did an episode on her!) chose his version of Love is In the Air performed by you and Colin Firth
3:50 I mean what an accolade
I was thrilled, as was Colin Firth
FIRST DISC (NATIVE NEW YORKER)
Favourite song from my disco youth
Theme tunes of the films I’m about to make
4:33 Look daggers at him
Hopefully going to be a good scene in my film
COMING OUT
5:21 You came out in the mid 1980s
5:25 You later said that you’re honesty was detrimental to your career
Wasn’t easy in that period being gay in showbusiness, and it probably still isn’t
Motivation for wanting to be open?
5:50 Just loved going out, being part of the gay scene
5:56 More than trying to carve out a place for myself in show business
Quite difficult to not share
HOLLYWOOD
6:21 you are unflinchingly cutting about some of the aspects
Powerful allure of it
When I was young - very unhappy - very tough town
Very important things happened there - relationships, friendships, arguments, weird jobs
6:59 Did a film with an orangutan once
7:01 I was not exactly on the skids
I think it was a masterpiece
One of the great scene partners of my career!
You had to control the orangutan before the scene starts
7:35 “Don’t get goofy” was the thing you had to say to him
He leaned over and grabbed my wig and ate it!
Filming stopped for 3 days
SECOND DISC (BILLIE HOLLIDAY)
8:15 Film w Diana Ross turned my head
Black power was so huge
In the 1970s culture, the gays and the blacks were on such a winning streak!
At the end, she can barely sing anymore
FATHER
A keen traveller - think of him every time you’re in an airport
He had a heart attack on his travellers climbing an escalator in Hong Kong Airport
When he was older he’d ask me to go with him
9:45 This was the backdrop to us being friends
All the men in my family were all in the navy, very very tough
Perspective didn’t change
10:34 “I’ve got a rather good lead to a restaurant… Was an extraordinary an escort bar
Misunderstood everything he was saying, followed us to our hotel
11:05 He was quite foxy in that way
MOTHER
Adored my mother, my aunt and my grandmother
Wanted to be a girl
11:21 Didn’t trust men: they went sailing and played golf - found unutterably grim
My mum discarded an old tweed skirt - a pi r squared
I decided I was Julie Andrews daughter when I was quite young
11:50 Didn’t learn when I was a child how to engage with other males
At 15, left public school
Then I didn’t want to be a girl anymore, I really enjoyed being a homosexual
CINEMA IN BRAINTREE
At age 6, first time seeing a film
To see Mary Poppins - the moment that turned my life upside down
12:37 It was mind blowing for me
THIRD DISC (FEED THE BIRDS)
From Mary Poppins
Thank God we’re not on camera because I might burst into tears!
SCHOOL 13:20 Just 7 when you were sent away to boarding school
First in Hampshire, then Catholic School in Yorkshire
A heartbreaking experience
13:41 They calcified the hearts of the empire rulers
13:53 It quarterises some emotional thing
Does it manifest in your relationships?
14:00 Just being kind of a frosty person
DID YOU HAVE FAITH 14:14 I was always praying that I wouldn't have a vocation
Some of you will be called by God
14:24 I was already harbouring a career as a floozy in show business
Didn’t want it to be complicated by having to become a monk or a priest
WHY THEATRE
Apart from the rest of the school
In my first play I played Queen of the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream
14:56 In rehearsals I was incredibly bad because I was completely wooden
In the first show, this cackly laugh came out of me, I brought the house down
FOURTH DISC (THE SPECIALS)
Core song when I came to London, such a different time, falling to pieces, everybody lived everywhere, an extraordinary place
1975 DISCOVERING
Left school and moved to London to study drama (just 16)
Stayed with a nice family with 2 dogs
Discovered nightlife
16:49 On a walk I saw this man in black leather and I thought who is this alien
Followed, he went into this pub, all these other people in leather
Tied the dogs to this lamppost and I went in and that was the beginning of my gay career
17:26 The law was still ambiguous, public displays were still illegal
An extraordinary time
17:55 This idea of counter-culture
What was the whole allure? Sex!
Crashing my whole background out of my life
18:05 Came from such a regimented background
STUDYING AT DRAMA SCHOOL
18:25 Asked to leave because of insubordination
I was a terrible show-off - probably distracting
THE CITIZENS THEATRE GLASGOW Oh you don’t want to go there because they all have sex in the showers afterwards
19:24 They didn’t condescend to the audience at all
Audience was largely working class
They didn’t like when the play went on longer than the 10:20 bus
GUY BENNET
Played role next to Colin Firth
We got amazing reviews
FIFTH DISC (PET SHOP BOYS) My household gods
When ‘The Happy Prince’ went to Berlin, the singers from pet shop boys came to see it
DIFFICULT TIME
Acquired a reputation for being difficult
Didn’t get on with the director for the above
Right in the middle of AIDS happening
21:44 Very lucky not to contract the HIV virus
For everyone involved it was a terrifying time
Losing friends, went a bit crazy
22:08 I became militant in my own world
→ short fuse
Very jaggedy strange freak
SUCCESS AND THEN FAILURE IN HOLLYWOOD
Julia Roberts My best friend’s wedding
The next best thing with Madonna
22:41 You’d been talked round and persuaded to take it on
I was re writing the script
When we were pitching - he (the director) fell asleep!!
72 year old man climbs over the gate, jumps, breaks his ankle - everything kept going wrong
23:34 There was a certain amount of relish with which the failure was reported in the press
STANDSTILL
Failure in career afterwards
23:43 The standstill in my career
23:54 It was a flash in the pan career at that point
SIXTH DISC (STAN GETZ)
Would’ve liked to have the George Michael version as well
BEGAN WRITING
I always thought my dream was to try and get writing (45 yo)
25:08 I wanted to try and harness my writing and write my own screenplay
Forced to pull myself up
Had to go through the failure, quite exhausting
25:34 I definitely had been embittered by failure
Very lucky, something constructive to do
STORY ABOUT OSCAR WILDE
Always a lucky star for me
We did ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’
I knew it meant something for me
It seemed that the story hadn’t been finished post his time in prison
26:33 The most exciting thing about Oscar Wilde is the crucifixion
→ The Happy Prince
Took a decade !
What was it like experiencing the film’s huge success
Expectations were high - but that’s normal
The beginning of the road to gay liberation
Harness these 20 million American LGBTQ+ people → I’d have Star Wars on my hands
Great views + people’s connection
SEVENTH DISC (PRELUDE TO PARSEVAL)
Piece I used in the Happy Prince - his goodbye to everybody
Ghostly and beautiful
LIVE IN UK WITH PARTNER, MOTHER, DOG
I work a lot these days
Not very social
I live in her house or she lives in my house which
30:04 She is 85 and set in her ways a Brexiteer
And I am 60 and set in my ways and a Remainer
It’s great!
MIDDLE AGED
It’s difficult
30:35 When you’re young you say up yours and keep going
But when you’re older you take on board things people say to you more
Very demoralising
Arriving at sell by date
Turned on TV and on came Stormzy but I couldn’t stop watching
31:16 The total eclipse of everything
We’d had Windrush, Grenfell, and this man with the bullet proof vest
EIGHTH DISC (STORMZY)
Because of the above!
CAST AWAY TO THE ISLAND IT’ll be like Jamaica
Book: Travels with my Aunt by Graham Green
Favourite book about the 60s
Luxury: Decent vegetables - courgettes, cabbages, peas, corn
Chosen song: Pet Shop Boys
They make me feel that I am me