Mount Everett – actor Rupert Everett
Gregg Kilday
RUPERT PLAYS IT STRAIGHT BUT STILL FOR LAUGHS
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM IN RELEASE AN IDEAL HUSBAND JUNE 25 INSPECTOR GADGET JULY 23
If Julia Roberts manages to find love on the big screen this summer, she’ll have to do it without the help of her gay best friend, Rupert Everett. For Everett, in a virtual summer trifecta of his own, has plenty of other love affairs to juggle–while also deftly laying to rest the myth that openly gay actors can’t play straight romantic leads. In the all-star screen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, already in theaters, Everett reigns as Oberon, the bare-chested king of the fairies, who manipulates the love lives of a pack of moonstruck mortals (including Ally McBeal’s Calista Flockhart) before walking off into the sunrise with Michelle Pfeiffer’s fairy queen.
Everett returns in Edwardian formal wear for an elegant screen version of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. As Lord Goring, a sybaritic London playboy, Everett is at the center of plenty of polite romantic intrigue, including Minnie Driver’s amorous advances. Then, for something completely different, he resurfaces as Claw, the dastardly villain of Disney’s action comedy Inspector Gadget, with NewsRadio’s Andy Dick tagging along as his aidede-camp.
“Working at Disney was a fascinating experience for me,” Everett says. “On the one hand, it’s an extremely commercially driven place putting out this product that’s ruthlessly correct, and on the other hand, it’s got partner benefits for gay people and is the only studio that seems to be sticking its finger slightly at the religious right.”
COPYRIGHT 1999 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
