Rupert Everett - 1980s

1980s

Everett's break came in 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre and later West End production of Another Country, playing a gay schoolboy opposite Kenneth Branagh, followed by a film version in 1984 with Cary Elwes and Colin Firth. Following on with 1985's Dance With a Stranger, Everett began to develop a promising film career until he co-starred with Bob Dylan in the huge flop Hearts of Fire (1987). Around the same time, Everett recorded and released an album of pop songs entitled Generation of Loneliness. Despite being managed by the largely successful pop svengali Simon Napier-Bell (who also managed Marc Bolan, launched and managed the band Japan, and steered Wham! to international fame), the public didn't take to his change in direction. The shift was short-lived, and he only returned to pop indirectly by providing backing vocals for his friend Madonna many years later, on her cover of "American Pie" and on the track "They Can't Take That Away from Me" on Robbie Williams' Swing When You're Winning in 2001.