Issue date: April 11, 1999

STRAIGHT TALK
By Jeffrey Zaslow (Zaslow is an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.)

Everybody's best friend

hen Hollywood's biggest names need a friend, Rupert Everett often gets the call. Having charmed moviegoers as Julia Roberts' gay buddy in My Best Friend's Wedding, he's now filming The Next Best Thing, in which his character fathers a child for his best friend, played by Madonna.

The 39-year-old native of Scotland - most recently onscreen as Shakespeare's rival, Marlowe, in Shakespeare in Love - has four movies due by summer's end. First up: May's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Calista Flockhart and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Q: As a European, what impresses you about America?

Americans and Europeans are really good for each other. In Europe, we feel weighed down by traditions. It's like living in a graveyard. [In America], hardly anything exists for more than 20 years. If it does, you tear it down and rebuild it. For Europeans, coming here is like an injection of oxygen. It's fantastic, just as it's fantastic for you to go there.

Q: Describe yourself as a boy.

I was in a daze in school. I couldn't concentrate. I had a very short attention span.

Q: Did you have ADD?

What's ADD?

Q: Attention-deficit disorder.

Probably. I knew there'd be a name for it in America. ADD. That's good. They have a name for everything here. In England, there aren't so many names. Now we're following you.

Q: How would an inattentive kid be described in Britain when you were young?

They'd just say, "He's undisciplined; spank him." But you can't criticize kids anywhere anymore, which I think is hideous. They're treated like sacred cows in Bombay. If they don't have some discipline, kids will all end up like child actors, the most manipulative hustlers you'll ever come across.

Q: You've long been openly gay and comfortable discussing it. Why has this been easier for you than for others?

I'm very happy being outside of society. I was never one of those homosexuals saying, "I've got a ticket! Let me in!" I don't think there's anything so great about society that you have to be a part of it.

Q: Now that you're in such demand as an actor, are you more or less ambitious?

Show business may have been my life's obsession at 20, but it's not now. I suppose I'm still hungry for success. But I'm older. Older makes you lazier. And I realize that success is only failure in embryo. You have success and then failure, failure and then success.

Q: What's the biggest problem with movies these days?

They're all about needs and wants and sex. And even when they're not about sex, they're always about sex.

PHOTO CREDIT: HTEO WESTENBERGER FOR USA WEEKEND