Rupert Everett reveals past promiscuity in memoir

Rupert Everett once called his younger self “brash, disingenuous, lethal.” At 67, the actor and memoirist admits he lied to partners, betrayed friends and treated audiences as afterthoughts. Now, three decades into sobriety and two bestselling books later, he’s still asking whether he’s finally grown up—or just learned to polish the same old story.

“I felt I could smash my past up through sex,” he wrote in 2012’s Vanished Years, describing his 20s in London when rent was due and charm was currency. Heroin, cocaine and casual encounters were part of the rhythm. The public only glimpsed this through Everett’s razor-sharp memoirs—Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins (2006) and Vanished Years (2012)—which skewered everyone from Madonna to Julia Roberts with equal candor. The books read like a tell-all dinner party where the host won’t let anyone leave early.

His reckoning with the past began on screen, too. After years of being cast as the sassy gay sidekick—think My Best Friend’s Wedding—Everett clawed back creative control. At 6ft 4in, he was never going to be a conventional leading man, but he carved out a different kind of stardom. His breakthrough was in Another Country, playing a rebellious schoolboy based on real-life spy Guy Burgess. That role confirmed his knack for playing charismatic misfits who burn too bright, too fast.

Now, decades later, Everett chuckles about the same stories that once threatened to derail him. “It was quite short-lived,” he says of his Hollywood moment—“I call it my Hollywood year.” Health, sobriety and perspective have replaced the chaos, though he still winces at the memory of a younger self he once barely recognized. The redemption isn’t in being flawless; it’s in being honest. That honesty is what keeps the films, the books and the audience coming back.