Actor Rupert Everett is not so gay, after all

Everett's hetero sexual liaisons

by Hassan Mirza, GAY.COM Monday 4 September, 2006 Daily Mail

[Famed British actor] Rupert Everett, whose autobiography will be released next month, admitted to an `on-off affair' with Bob Geldof's late wife Paula Yates.

The gay British actor Everett, 47, said he had a sexual relationship with Yates while he was married to Geldof. She then went on to have a relationship with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and died of a heroin overdose in 2000.

"That side of our relationship was tenuous to say the least, and our lives (eventually) went in different directions."

He has also admitted to sexual encounters with actresses Susan Sarandon and Beatrice Dalle:

"I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs - but then I am mystified by most of my relationships.

Paula Yates and Bob Geldof came to see me in 1982, when I was appearing in the stage version of Another Country, my first West End hit.

Bob had just performed in Alan Parker's adaptation of Pink Floyd's The Wall. According to Alan, Bob had a c*** so big that he needed a wheelbarrow to carry it around in.

Everything about Bob announced the fact: the incredibly thin body, the large pushy nose, the jungle smell of the man and, of course, the delight he evidently felt at the sound of his own voice.

He never listened. But this is not a put-down. Actually, it is the recipe for success. Bob was definitely sexy in a good old-fashioned Rimbaud (the poet) kind of a way, and all set to become a legend one way or another."

Rock chick

Paula was his perfect foil. Or at least that's how it looked. On the one hand she was a typical English rock chick, with her shock of peroxide hair, a white candyfloss quiff, and a wardrobe of beautiful clothes made by the fashion designer Antony Price.

She had a thin, flat voice and she clung to her man like a sweet little cartoon octopus. Literally. But she was no bimbo, although she loved it if you thought she was. She was intelligent.

Paula wasn't classically beautiful, and yet she was startlingly attractive. She had a fragility that was erotic to men. She could break if you squeezed her too hard. She had a tiny waist that you could put your hands around and your fingers would nearly touch.

This was her most extraordinary feature, because it gave the man she let hold her a sense of protective power; even if you were gay you could not help but feel turned on.

Her face had the illusion of beauty, but in fact it was wonky all over. She had a pretty nose, little girl's eyes, but her lips gave everything away. I think lips are more telling than eyes, and Paula's were as expressive as a cardiogram.

They were small and pointed at the top, and however sultry she was, I felt the lips could never quite control the mirth inside her, while there was still mirth. They also hid her sweet uneven teeth.

Half Mata Hari and half Marti Caine (an old-school Northern music- hall comic), she moved between the two states as guilelessly as a child, and it was easy to fall in love with her.

After she and Bob came to see me on stage, we went out for dinner. It was a way of breaking the ice before Paula interviewed me for Cosmopolitan magazine the following day.

Undress me

When we did the interview, she had a curious technique. She began by undressing me like a doll. In those days I was so thin I wore five of everything — socks, tracksuits, T-shirts — and in the name of research, they all came off, one by one.

"What have you got here?" she squeaked. "Another pair of socks?" Pretty soon I was down to my underwear and she was sitting on top of me.

Her skirts and petticoats were like an overflowing bubble bath, snapping with electricity, and at some point the interview ended and a strange love affair of utter misfits began.

She was married. I was gay. These constraints operated like a kind of safety net and there were no obstacles between us.

During those early days, she would come to my dressing room, her arrival down the stairs announced by the rustle of petticoats, the click of Manolo heels and the odd little gasp.

She loved a dramatic entrance and had invented her own brand. She would stand in the doorway like Tinkerbell, then bite her lip and in a breathy voice borrowed from Marilyn Monroe she would say: "Hi, big boy..." It was pure genius.

When I finished Another Country, I went straight into a play with Gordon Jackson, the actor who played Hudson, the butler, in Upstairs Downstairs.

He was a lovely man, and so was his wife Rona. Neither of them had any idea who Paula was or that she was with Bob, whoever he was, or that I was gay for that matter. But they saw us together a lot and so assumed we were an item.

They would ask us out for dinner. Rona would tell Paula about the pitfalls of being married to an actor, and Gordon would advise me about the right time to take out a mortgage (never).

One night, when Paula and I had both been feeling fairly suicidal about our mixed-up lives, Rona asked us when we were going to tie the knot.

Our immediate reactions were to think that she was talking about making a noose. Gordon threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Will ye hark on these young?" he said to Rona. "Soon," screeched Paula, desperately back-pedalling.

During our various encounters — when we were sometimes joined by a desperately shy Kenneth Williams, Gordon's best friend, the potential for living according to the norm was certainly not lost on me."

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