Rupert Everett has said that he “hated all men” and preferred the company of women growing up.
The British actor, known for The Importance Of Being Earnest and My Best Friend’s Wedding, talked about how the male side of his family were from a British Army background and he did not want to join in their pursuits as a child.
Everett told the podcast Rosebud With Gyles Brandreth: “I just think the men in my family, we’re all military and naval.
“In this house in Norfolk we lived, every Saturday, every Wednesday, we all set off at 10 o’clock to go sailing and we’d all have to carry these horrible bags, full of sails and batons and rollocks and oars and things like that and it was always cold.
“And I wanted to stay with the ladies and lick out the pudding bowl, and things like that and, my grandmother, who was a very frosty lady, actually… the only people she could really identify with were little children and she was absolutely sweet to us when we were children.
“And so I loved her, I loved my aunt and I loved my mother and I hated all the men, which is strange.
“I have asked myself (the question:) ‘how does homosexuality arise from loving women, and not hating men, but feeling very distrustful of men’ because I felt very stand-offish with my father.”
Everett recalled one moment where he wore high heels and his “father was absolutely livid”, but admitted they “eventually” came to terms with each other.
He also said his father, Major Anthony Michael Everett, never minded him playing female parts when he was acting in school.
Everett also said: “I was very shy, quiet. child I loved sitting in cupboards, I was great crossdresser I’d be a woman if this was today because I stole one of my mother’s discarded.. skirts and I wore it.
“And I pretended I was Julie Andrews’ daughter, this was after I’d seen The Sound Of Music and Mary Poppins and that really was one of the big changes in my life.
“And I’d sit in the cupboard at home with the door a little bit open, playing house, in drag.”
He has previously said he wanted to be a girl until he was about 15, and told the Times magazine in 2020 that he felt the transgender movement has “completely overshadowed” the campaign for gay rights.
Everett has lived with his partner Henrique, a Brazilian accountant, and has had relationships with famous women including Susan Sarandon and the late Paula Yates.