Rupert Everett on fame, Madonna and other subjects...

I loved Rupert Everett when I saw him in "Another Country" all those years ago. Then again about a decade ago in "My Best Friend's Wedding" opposite Julia Roberts. I didn't even mind him in "The Next Best Thing" opposite Madonna. But then I saw him on "The View" a few weeks ago and he was so boooooring! He was plugging his memoir "Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins" and his segment was a snooze. And yet, I can't give up on him so I've just read a new interview with Rupert in Out magazine and found it to be far more interesting than his chat with the ladies of "The View."
ON FAME: "No one realizes how boring it is. You get an awards ceremony every four days. You take part in this ludicrous backslapping circus; I'd rather go to a back room and get j***** off. I'd love to have been cross-dressing with Garbo and having sex with everybody in 1930, but frankly, it's not that exciting now."
ON HIS MOVIE WITH MADONNA: "["The Next Best Thing"] cut my career dead. It was finished from then on. It was one thing being a gay success; it's totally another thing being a gay failure - it's unmarketable."
ON BEING OUT: "It's a difficult challenge. If you were trying to promote yourself as Anderson Cooper, are you gay first and foremost or are you Anderson Cooper? If he does agree to talk about it, well then you can't talk about anything else, and no one WANTS to talk about anything else, which is understandable."
ON GAY CULTURE: "Being gay is not an identity' that's the bottom line. It's a sideline. But through no one's fault and everybody's fault, it's become a subject for identity, so you run away from mainstream culture into a kind of offbeat culture, and then the offbeat culture becomes a little mainstream culture of its own - just as brutal, actually, as the culture you thought you were leaving behind."

Greg Hernandez has covered the entertainment industry for the Daily
News since 2001. He's considered a bit odd by some for his obsession
with box office numbers, has been known to camp out near the kitchen
at premieres for first crack at the hors d'oeurves, and Greg's never
seen a red carpet he didn't want to stroll down.