Rupert Everett

I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything.

I seem to have been everywhere in the last 30 years, maybe not in the epicenter but flying around the periphery of extraordinary events and equally extraordinary people.

The whole point of being in the Army is wanting to get killed, wanting to test yourself to the limits. Now you have to fly 15,000ft above the war zone to avoid getting hit. I don't think there is any point in having wars if that's how you're going to behave. It's pathetic. All this whining!

Now what do you get in the Army? Bad helmets and Basra. Your guns don't work and everyone hates you when you come back.

I am at that age when you panic at the slightest thing.

Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you.

The thing about lying is it is quite exhausting you have to remember a lot.

As a kid I would be put to bed when my parents had guests and because I was such a show-off I would go to my mum's room, put on her nightdress and Jackie Onassis shawl, run downstairs, go outside, ring the doorbell and pretend to be one of the guests. I'd say, 'Hello, I'm Mrs. So-and-So.'

There's still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. It's regrettable, it's stupid, it's heartless, and it's immoral, but there it is.

Authority figures are so irritating. Because they always tell you to do things for reasons that aren't very good. That sums up what authority is about for me.

Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50 year old No one let me tell you.

I went to boarding school at seven and cried and cried.

To be a soldier one needs that special gene, that extra something, that enables a person to jump into one on one combat, something, after all, that is unimaginable to most of us, as we are simply not brave enough.

You cannot be politically correct in a war.

Being in Hollywood is like being in the Christian right these days.

My grandfather was born in India and three generations of my family served there.

My idea of a holiday was following my family up the hill with my pekinese, who would skip over the heather in front of me.

I don't want to be carried out of a club wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and a cap on the wrong way around when I am 70, but I would like to settle down a bit. Maybe with a partner.

There's still a great deal of bias about homosexuality.

Starbucks is spreading like a cancer.

I've never been any good with authority.

It's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy.

Actors make bad lovers. Their most important kiss is for the camera. Not in a superficial way, in a really deep way. They can only give everything if they know someone is going to shout cut!

Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out.

I've been reduced to drag.

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.

I don't think I've ever tried to change anyone. I don't have the energy.

We now live in a world where the only thing to have is success, but failure is marvelous. It's fertiliser, it's like living fertiliser, because you're forced on yourself.