Rupert Everett has opened up about the less-visible toll that stardom can take, revealing that the pressure to look a certain way for the screen left him dealing with serious long-term consequences.
Now 67, the actor became a familiar face in the 1990s, with his role in 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding opposite Julia Roberts remaining one of his best-remembered turns.
But while he appeared polished and camera-ready, Everett has said the effort to maintain a “perfect” physique came at a steep price — one he believes has affected his body permanently.
“I ruined myself,” he told the Guardian. “Now I’m almost crippled as a result.”
“I could never be bothered to do all those things, like stretching, which were necessary for lifting weights, because your tendons get tighter and tighter,” he continued. “So boring. I didn’t do any of that. So now my demise will be musculoskeletal, I think.”
Looking back to his teens, Everett has described feeling out of place, admitting he saw himself as a “freak” and even compared himself to “Gollum” at 15, when he was only around 5ft tall.
That insecurity was complicated by a dramatic growth spurt soon after, as he shot up to 6ft 4 in the space of three years — a transformation he says he struggled to inhabit comfortably.
“My arse was like two bones and a hole. And my legs were skeletal,” he recalled, explaining that he didn’t know how to adjust to his taller frame, or even how to stand and carry himself with confidence.
Before he later committed to building muscle properly, he turned to a more makeshift method to change his silhouette. “I met these two queens in Tufnell Park who made bodysuits, and they made me a false bottom, false calves, false shoulders, false everything.”
Everett said he relied on these additions day-to-day and even wore them on camera, noting he appeared in them “in everything” — without informing directors that what they were seeing wasn’t his natural body.
In time, he moved away from the bodysuits and focused on the gym, eventually creating the kind of muscular look that matched what the industry expected. Even then, he says the satisfaction didn’t last.
Reflecting on that period, Everett said: “I was wonderful-looking at one point. I had muscles. Everything.”
“It was quite short-lived,” he added. “I call it my Hollywood year.”
Despite recognising he’d achieved the image he was chasing, Everett has said a sense of not measuring up still followed him through his most high-profile years.
“Even work was about cruising, really. Trying to be attractive,” he recalled. “Which obviously came from the feeling of not being attractive enough.”
“My vanity for me wasn’t about ‘mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’. Vanity is often a feeling of deep insecurity rather than feeling how fabulous I am,” Everett added.
These days, he’s stepped back from intense gym routines and instead spends more time walking with his Labrador, aiming for a calmer, more balanced way of living. He has also spoken about leaving behind the drugs-and-party chapter of his life after marrying his husband Henrique, a Brazilian accountant, in 2024.
“I always thought when I was still clubbing and hanging out that I’d be one of those 75-year-olds in a tie-dye T-shirt at raves,” he admitted, before conceding that stage of life has passed and he isn’t ‘remotely interested’ in it anymore.
“Well, I’m hardly interested in anything any more,” he added. “I’m interested in dust particles and things like that. I could quite happily sit just watching spring.”