Rupert Everett: Twitter ‘hags’ police us like the Stasi
RUPERT EVERETT has compared “judgmental, sanctimonious” social media users to the Stasi as he criticised attacks on free speech.
The 61-year- old actor and writer, famous for his roles in My Best Friend’s Wedding and Shakespeare In Love, likened the current climate where people can be subjected to Twitter abuse for not expressing the “correct” opinion to the notorious East German secret police.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, he said: “We’re in such a weird new world, a kind of Stasi it feels like to me, and if you don’t reflect exactly the right attitude, you risk everything just being destroyed for you by this judgmental, sanctimonious, intransigent, intractable, invisible cauldron of hags around in the virtual world.”
During an interview at the festival, the star was also asked to reflect on his life.
Everett, who is gay, said he was born “illegal” because homosexuality was not legalised in the UK until 1967.
“My age group, we’ve been through such a weird spectrum.
“As a gay person you know I was born illegal if I was gay in 1967,” he said. “That whole movement of the Seventies in London and in New York was so incredible and the Eighties was so weird with Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Aids.
“Blair’s Britain, which now seems like Camelot to me really, and it did at the time actually.
“London was like from 1993, 1995 to 2004 was really quite ... the change that came about was really amazing.”
When asked about what legacy he may leave behind, the actor said that a modern obsession with the present may prevent him being remembered.
He said: “I don’t know about legacy; I think when you croak now things are moving too fast. No one knows how to celebrate anything that isn’t happening right now.”
Everett was speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival to promote his latest, much anticipated book To The End Of The World, the actor’s third volume of autobiography.