Rupert Everett admits living with his Brexiteer mother has caused ‘friction’
The actor was speaking during an appearance on Desert Island Discs.
Rupert Everett has admitted that living with his Brexiteer mother has created “a certain amount of friction” at home.
The Golden Globe-nominated actor, who backs Remain, recently moved in with his 85-year-old mother in the UK.
Everett, 60, said his mother was “set in her ways” but that living with her, as well as with his partner and their dog Pluto, was “great”.
Speaking on Desert Island Discs, the Hollywood star said of his current life: “I work a lot actually these days. I live a very quiet life. I am not very social.
“I am a kind of country blob most of the time, and I come up to town and almost get run over every time I cross the road.
“I live in her house or she lives in my house, whichever one of us you are listening to.
“She is 85 and set in her ways – a Brexiteer – and I am 60 and set in my ways, and a Remainer.
“And there is obviously a certain amount of friction but also it is great.”
Appearing on the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme, Everett chose songs including Shut Up by Stormzy and Ghost Town by The Specials to chart his conversation with host Lauren Laverne.
Everett, best known for starring roles in Dance With A Stranger and My Best Friend’s Wedding, said being sent to boarding school had resulted in his famously “frosty” personality.
He was educated at the £36,486-a-year Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, where pupils are taught by monks.
He said: “It’s a heart-breaking experience that you never quite recover from. I think these schools were made for empire because they calcified the hearts of the empire rulers.
“They would never be as hurt again as they were hurt by the abandonment of their parents.”
He added: “I think it cauterises some emotional thing.”
Asked whether he saw that in his own life, he replied: “Just being a generally frosty person. If I am a frosty person, which I probably am in a way, it comes from that.”
Everett, who played the role of Oscar Wilde in 2018’s The Happy Prince, also said coming out as gay helped him overcome his family’s “regimented” military background.
Asked what immersing himself in London’s gay scene had helped him achieve, he replied: “Sex and crashing my whole background out of my life.
“I came from such a regimented, militaristic background. Every shag I felt, at the time, was knocking that down and destroying it.
“I felt I had lost myself from my own previous life. That is what I felt.”
Everett is currently in New York rehearsing for a Broadway production of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, which opens this spring.
Rupert Everett on Desert Island Discs airs on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 on Sunday at 11.15am.
