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My Wildest ride yet ( few!) ...and, yes, I’ve had a
Rupert Everett on the eight years of blood, sweat and tears behind his new film about Oscar Wilde
‘Tim is an amazing director,’ he says. ‘Because he’s never had a failure he works in the most luxurious way. [He gets] every single amenity he wants. It’s rather like being in a holiday camp working on one of his films. People come round with delicious vegetable dips all the time, or special smoothies. Tim’s like a mad kind of elf leaping around the set on tiptoe. His vision is so particular. He invented his genre and it has a truth to it. All the characters have him in them.
‘It was a fantastic film to work on. Tim is a very, very nice director to actors. It was a wealthy film and he was the king of it. I’m only in it for one minute but I was there for a month staying in this lovely hotel on a beach which was rather like a grand rest home. Every day I wasn’t working I walked four hours to a pub for lunch. It was just amazing...’
For once Rupert’s run out of words. There’s only so much you can say about a film in which you appear for a minute. Besides, the train is carrying us through the tunnel now and his mind is on the technical recce ahead. When he finished the script for The Happy Prince eight years ago he offered it to legendary producer Scott Rudin whose many successful films include the Oscarwinning No Country For Old Men.
‘He loved it and immediately fired me as the actor,’ says Rupert. ‘He wanted Philip Seymour Hoffman to play Oscar which was a brilliant idea. That’s when I should have said to myself, “Be a writer and get it done.” But I was still at the end of my vain era so I said no. From then on it went downhill for a long time. The me I am now would have definitely handed it over, because Philip [who died in 2014] was a fantastic actor. He’d have won the Oscar. Scott would have spent £25 million on the film and I’d have been the writer of an amazing Scott Rudin film about Oscar Wilde. Stupid!’ Again, he laughs at his younger self.
‘I wrote it too late really. If I’d only started writing it five years earlier when I was still very successful.’ He’s referring to the days when he was a box-office star following his roles in My Best Friend’s Wedding and An Ideal Husband. ‘But I was verging on my sell-by date eight years ago. It’s harder because successful people’s ideas are good ideas whereas unsuccessful people’s ideas are questionable ideas. You have to prove yourself.’
And so The Happy Prince began to ‘take over’ his life, as Rupert set about finding financial backers for his film. ‘It’s the most precarious business trying to get together an independent film these days,’ he says. ‘It’s like being a sperm hitting an egg or a fish making it to the top of the river. There are so many pitfalls and so many crises. You veer from one disaster to another as it slowly puts itself together. It’s taken so much out of my life.’
Such as? ‘It took over my professional life because I ended up doing much less work as I was always thinking, “My film is happening this January or that October” so I’d cancel everything and then discover that it wasn’t. It also made me ill at a certain point. It was going to happen in September two years ago but it didn’t. Then it was going to go ahead in March last year, but the money wasn’t there. I got a terrible kind of pneumonia. For months I was completely run down – depressed, dreadful.’
He shakes his head, takes a mouthful of the sausage they’re serving for breakfast. Thinks. Brightens up. ‘On the other hand it’s tested my resilience. I am in one sense a very neurotic, whiny queen and this has had to be tested. I recognise that even if the film is a disaster, it’s been good for me as a 57-year-old fairy.’
Rupert describes the film, which covers the last month of Oscar Wilde’s life, as ‘a 19th- century road movie’ given that the action takes place in Germany, Belgium, France and Italy. Set in a hotel room and told through flashback, Rupert’s dying Oscar tries to make sense of the life he’s lived and those he’s loved. Colin Firth appears as Oscar’s friend Reginald Turner, one
of the few who cared for the playwright after his two-year imprisonment for gross indecency as a result of his affair with Alfred Douglas.
Rupert says that without Colin The Happy Prince would never have been made. He first worked with him in the film that launched them both to stardom, Another Country in 1984, and they went on to appear together in the big-screen St Trinian’s remakes. ‘Colin stood by the film from the beginning. Without him it probably would never have happened,’ he says. ‘We’re good friends but we’re not in each other’s inner circle so it’s not as if he owed me anything. Without him I’d have lost half the money but he stuck by me. It’s amazing. I’ll always be in his debt, and that of the other actors. They’ve all been great and I’m so grateful to all of them because without them I’d never have made it.’
Crikey. The Rupert of old – or rather youth – rarely showed such humility. We’re 20 minutes from Brussels now. His phone is jumping around on the table. He takes the call – briefly. Apologises. Continues. ‘The first four years of trying to find finance were completely barren,’ he says. ‘I went round everywhere in England and never got a penny or any interest. Then, in Germany, I did get some interest but they said, “Have you got English partners?” because they couldn’t imagine why I wouldn’t. I said, “Oh yes”, but I didn’t have any. I knew I had to do something.’
That ‘something’ turned out to be taking on the role of Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s play, The Judas Kiss. The first production in 1998 with Liam Neeson had been a flop, but Rupert was determined to make a success of it. He did. In 2013 he was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor. He was appearing in the play in New York in May when he received news the budget was in place. ‘When I did The Judas Kiss I proved I had a take on the part. After that the BBC and the production company Lionsgate got involved,’ he says. ‘I wrote to Colin and I’ve been very, very lucky. He was meant to be starting another film that’s been put back to January, so he’s been able to carve out the time.’
Fields are replaced by concrete as the train reaches its destination. ‘All my life I tried to fit into something,’ he tells me. ‘When you’re young and you go to clubs, you’re a little animal whose heart is beating fast and you’re sniffing the wind looking for the latest fabulous opportunities – friends, relationships. Not any more. I don’t feel the need or desire to fit into anything – just my guild so to speak. I feel quite connected to my work and connected by the shorthand I have with other actors. That sense of belonging I do like.’
The train stops. Rupert stands to collect his bag. ‘Who knows? It could be a disaster,’ he says. ‘In all likelihood I’ll be a terrible, hysterical queen throwing terrible tantrums.’ But, somehow, I think he won’t.
‘Without Colin Firth I’d have lost half the money, he stuck by me’