Rupert Everett, actor

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rupert Everett is an actor, writer and director whose breakthrough came in 1981 when he was cast as a gay schoolboy in Another Country, Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film. Rupert later starred in Dance with a Stranger before making a splash in Hollywood playing Julia Roberts's gay confidante in My Best Friend's Wedding. But his movie career took a dive after The Next Best Thing - in which he played the gay father of Madonna's baby - flopped. After a period out of the limelight he turned his attention to writing and won great acclaim for his witty and illuminating memoirs about his life in showbusiness. In 2018 Rupert starred in his directorial debut, The Happy Prince - a film about Oscar Wilde's final years in exile. The film was a decade-long labour of love for Rupert from writing the screenplay to securing the funding and persuading his friends Colin Firth and Emily Watson to join the cast. The film was well-received, with one critic calling it a 'deeply felt, tremendously acted tribute to courage'. Later this year Rupert is starring in the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? BOOK CHOICE: Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene LUXURY ITEM: Vegetables CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.1	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.2	For right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:20.4	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.0	Music Radio Music
0:43.3	My cast away this week is Rupert Everett.
0:45.9	As an actor, writer and now director, he's learned and revealed more than most about how
0:50.7	the show business game works.
0:52.8	His razor sharp memoirs chronicle the hits like another country in which he lit up the
0:57.5	stage with his youthful good looks and charisma.
1:00.1	His Hollywood breakthrough, my best friends wedding and his passion project, The Happy Prince,
1:05.1	about the final years of the exiled Oscar Wilde.
1:08.5	He made even better copy out of the misses, including the next best thing with Madonna.
1:13.3	In fact, he argues that in his 40-year career, the snakes have been as useful as the ladders.
1:18.8	He says we now live in a world where the only thing to have is success, but failure is marvelous.
1:24.8	It's like living fertilizer because you're forced on yourself.
1:28.3	Rupert Everett welcomed a desert islandist.
1:30.3	Thank you very much for having me.
1:31.4	It's so thrilling to hear the music and to be actually on the show.
1:35.1	Welcome. People don't usually like to talk about their failures,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.