Rupert Everett: A man on a mission

Video

Click to play video

Mumbai: Hollywood's man-on-a-mission, actor Rupert Everett, is in India as a UN ambassador for AIDS awareness.

One of Hollywood's very few openly gay actors, Everett hopes to involve Bollywood stars in the campaign to spread information about AIDS.

To Indians, of course, he's familiar from that cameo he made as Christopher Marlowe in Shakespeare In Love, as Madonna's gay friend with whom she has a baby in The Next Best Thing, as the voice of Prince Charming in Shrek 2, but always as Julia Roberts' gay confidante in My Best Friend's Wedding.

In fact, so popular was that film here that it was subsequently remade in Hindi as Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai. Everett, who has an interesting relationship with India, may be unfamiliar with our movies, but says he loves coming back to this country.

CNN-IBN’s entertainment editor Rajeev Masand caught up with Everett on his mission and his love for India.

Rajeev Masand:Welcome to this show and welcome to India.

Rupert Everett: Thank you for having me.

Rajeev Masand: Rupert, you have a very sentimental relationship with India — your grandfather was born here.

Rupert Everett: That's right and my grandfather worked here after the war and before the partition. When I was a kid, I used to be brought here to go and have holidays in Srinagar, which I loved. And I was here last year with my dad also, in Calcutta and I toured India.

Rajeev Masand: You've been here as an ambassador for AIDS awareness. What is the sort of work that you have done here?

Rupert Everett: I have happened to watch this kind of invisible Tsunami wave of AIDS that hit three different continents. First of all, while living in America in the early eighties and then living in Europe a couple of years later and finally while travelling a lot to Africa and Asia. I have seen it hit time after time and also the reaction of the people once it hits.

In America, in 1983, when AIDS first became apparent, it was a very similar situation to India now because you are feeling this way very strongly in the last few years. What happens is that people absolutely resist talking about the subject. They only want to romanticise about the idea of sex, they don't want to roll up their sleeves and face the fact that things happen.

President Regan, for example, in the eight years of office, never once said the word AIDS. This is a country I adore and I feel like that there is a similar kind of reticence here. Speaking as a homosexual man, who is a criminal in your country, you are still labouring under, for example, a Penal Code from 1861.

There is a lot we can do about it now that we are globalised. We can offer a lot of help and experience and all the things that we have been through. It's great to be able to reach out a hand and take part that is what I'd like to do.

I think, as an entertainer, one of the things that was really remarkable about the epidemic was that when it hit America, despite the fact that politicians did not want to talk about it and no one wanted to mention the word AIDS, one actress, Elizabeth Taylor, stood up and turned the whole thing around.

She gave AIDS a face. And then, all the actors and the entire entertainment world followed. What I would like to do is to be able to encourage the people from Bollywood and the music industry to speak out a little bit more about AIDS.

Rajeev Masand: Are you familiar about Indian cinema?

Rupert Everett: Not really. I am neither familiar with American cinema. I have left cinema behind me for the time being.

Rajeev Masand: Was it difficult coming out?

Rupert Everett: I wasn't a very successful actor when I came out. I was 26-year-old and I remember, I finished an affair with my last girl friend and it ended quite badly. It wasn't a decision, it just happened.

Rajeev Masand: Would your career have been different if you had perhaps not come out?

Rupert Everett: Yes, definitely.

Rajeev Masand: You believe that?

Rupert Everett: I know it.

Rajeev Masand: You wanted to play James Bond, didn't you? You said that you'd make a fantastic Bond.

Rupert Everett: No, I never said that; other people said that. I didn't really want to play James Bond. And by the way, the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, is excellent. He is the real Bond of the day I think.

Rajeev Masand: He's even said to his producers that he would love to do a full-frontal nude scene for his gay fans. Do you think that is an interesting direction he is going in?

Rupert Everett: I think that is great.

Rajeev Masand: In India, you are best recognised for your performance in My Best Friend's Wedding, that film was remade in India, in Hindi. What they did is that they removed the gay character and made that into a woman.

Rupert Everett: I know, that is pathetic.

Rajeev Masand: Would you like to see taht film?

Rupert Everett: Yes, I'm dying to see it.

Rajeev Masand: Finally, one last star-struck question — out of Julia Roberts and Maddona, who is the nicer one? You have worked with both of them.

Rupert Everett: I think nice is one of the nasty words in our vocabulary because it it is a kind of a beige word. It certainly not a word that describes either of them, because they are explosive, they are funny, they are ambitious and they are not women like old-fashioned women. They are almost men in a way.

They are huge businesswomen and they have had to fight very hard because to be a woman in Hollywood is pretty difficult as it is a male world. When you arrive there as a woman — you are beautiful, you've got a great body and there are a flock of vultures out there who swoop down to have you and you must learn how to not be had. You must have them back and that makes a very strange type of woman actually. And, that's them.

Rajeev Masand: Best of luck. We hope we'll see you lots more and you visit India lots more. Thank you so much for talking to us.

Rupert Everett: Thank you.

More on IBNLive Right Now

PHOTOGALLERY