Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins

by Rupert Everett

  Sharon, on the other hand, never gives up. One Sunday morning, two weekends later, I was in Miami staggering home after a twenty-hour binge in a string of clubs. It was about noon and the phone rang; Sharon was calling from San Francisco. “Honey,” she said. “I can’t believe what’s happening. I’m with my pastor and we agree that we should stop the film and sue the studio. I’ve put in a call to SAG. What do you think?”

  Well, I must say that apart from forgetting all about it until Sharon called, it had crossed my mind that my role in life was to become the Olivia de Havilland of my generation. De Havilland had fought the studios in court after being put on suspension for refusing a role in a film. She won her case, but seldom worked again. My civil rights had been fucked with, and it was not for the first time. Countless studio executives had voiced similar sentiments, but they’d had the sense to phrase them in more delicate, unidentifiable terms. (“We’re not making that kind of a movie.”) As Sharon filled me in on the last week, sparing no detail of her latest conversation with the studio, I lay back on my bed, my head spinning. I searched for a cigarette, had a shot of vodka and a couple of Tylenol and, suddenly, for the first time in my entire career, I felt totally overwhelmed and began to cry.

  “Oh, honey, don’t cry!” said Sharon.

  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’ve been out all night and I’m just overtired.”

  “I know, honey. It’s just so unfair.”

  “Yes,” I whimpered.

  “Well, you get some sleep. I’m going to talk about this some more with my pastor.” (Who was this pastor? I remember thinking. Rasputin, hopefully.) “And then you tell me what to do. We can close the movie down if that’s what you want.”

  All I wanted at that point was a Xanax. After I put the phone down I called my friend Albert on the other line and went over to his house where the party still raged, and forgot about the whole thing. But I always remembered Sharon’s sweetness that morning on the phone.

  Anyway, we finally got to work together on A Different Loyalty, which was based on the true story of the notorious English spy, Kim Philby, and his third wife, an American, Eleanor Brewer. They met in Beirut in the late fifties, fell in love and got married. A few years later he went out to the shops one day and never came back. Suddenly, the whole world turned upside down for the poor woman as she discovered that her husband was not the man she thought he was. In fact, he was one of the most wanted spies in the world. He disappeared for months before resurfacing in Russia. She went there to see him, in an attempt to discover what, exactly, their relationship had meant, if anything, but she hated Russia and tried to organise with the British that Philby be spirited back to England. He had become a dangerous drunk by this stage and was already having an affair with the wife of another famous spy-in-exile, Donald Maclean. At first, Philby agreed to her plan, but then backed out at the last moment. She went back to America and died.

  It was a great story, adapted from a book by her, a good part of which was sheer wishful thinking. The truth of the matter was that the two of them were probably just a pair of nasty deluded drunks, who both deserved what they got. However, the screenwriter took her side, turning the story into a big romantic thriller, and it had the makings of a good film. But it needed a rewrite. The dialogue was flat and overwritten. For some reason, Sharon insisted on changing the names from the real characters to new, invented ones. She chose Sally, which was the name of our neighbour’s old fat golden retriever when I was a child, and every time I uttered it the image of Sally lumbering across the garden never failed to invade the acting space. But there was no arguing with Sharon, so Sally she was. Equally problematic was the fact that the story took place in New York, London, Beirut and Moscow, and faking them was going to be difficult.

  All of this, however, paled into insignificance when, at dinner with Sharon early in the rehearsal period, I realised something that had hitherto escaped me. She was utterly unhinged.

  “Honey,” she said in the middle of the first course, after the initial pleasantries had been eaten. “Have you let your character in yet?”

  “What do you mean, Shaz?” I replied slightly wearily. I always find that when another actor wants to discuss character, it usually means that they want to discuss your character, specifically what you need to do so that they can play their character the way they want.

  “How many dead people have you played?”

  “Tons. I only ever play dead people,” I said gloomily.

  “So you know. Have you let him in?” She spoke quietly and looked at me with a burning intensity. She had never looked better, even if she insisted on cutting her own hair with her nail scissors. She was a great beauty and her eyes were hypnotic. I was swept in by their drama, even if I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.

  “Sort of,” I said, feeling my way.

  “Sure. I felt that. Man, she came into me last night. She’s right there.” She banged her chest with her fist, then opened her fingers and grabbed one of her breasts, shaking it with passion. A man at the next table nearly fell off his chair.

  “You mean Mrs. Philby? Dead Mrs. Philby? Even though she’s now called Sally?”

  “Oh yeah! What’s in a name! She is in such pain. I’m trying to live with her but she’s gonna take over. I can feel it. Once they take over . . .” She whistled and shook her head. All eyes were upon us. I felt as if we were in a play. I cleared my throat to deliver my next line.

  “No, he hasn’t come into me yet, thank God, and frankly I hope he doesn’t. He was a ghastly old lush, wasn’t he?” I had more practical problems I wanted to discuss. “Shaz, I’m much more concerned about the dialogue. We’ve got to do something.”

  She ignored me. “The first time was on Casino.” Now she was speaking so softly that I could hardly hear and had to crane forward. So did everyone at the next table. Always speak as quietly as possible. It draws the listener in and makes you look riveting as well as beautiful to the onlooking fans. Because, make no mistake: Sharon’s career was a 24/7 affair. She didn’t have to be on a sound stage to be filming. The world was her camera and her alarm clock was the clapperboard. She was aware of how she looked from every pair of eyes in the room and she gave a bit of close-up to all of them. It was legendary stuff and I adored it.

  “Marty left the mad scene for last,” she continued. “You remember, when she has that total meltdown?”

  “How could I forget? It was brilliant.”

  “Well, she came inside me while I was in the trailer before the scene.”

  “Not very safe! We call that barebacking.” I giggled awkwardly. I was never comfortable when things got metaphysical.

  Sharon gave me a withering glare. “I was, like, completely possessed. She was right there. I was her. Bobby could tell straightaway. He said to Marty, ‘How much film do you have?’ And Marty said, ‘We got a full mag!’”

  “God!” I interjected, rather hopelessly. This was turning into one of those conversations one had with a homeless person.

  “’So just keep rolling,’ Bobby told him. ‘Trust me.’ He knew. Bobby knew. And when Marty said, ‘Action,’ I blacked out. I have no recollection. She took over. At the end of the scene I was on the ground. I couldn’t move and Marty said, ‘Don’t touch her. Leave her for a few minutes.’”

  “That’s incredible!” I gasped.

  The thing was, if you watched that film, Sharon’s performance was possessed. It was on a level that few actors achieve, so it was difficult to know what to think. Maybe she was invaded by the dead. Either way, I was hopelessly out of my depth. (All I knew was that no one ever said, “Leave her there,” after I finished a scene. More likely, “Get her out of here!”)

  “There was a pinkish mist over me,” she continued. “Everyone saw it. And it’s happened again. This could be the last time we speak, you and I.”

  This girl was stark raving mad. “You’ve got to be careful though,” I said, wondering just what surprises were in store.
“You don’t want to have another stroke.”

  The filming began. I never found myself, but mercifully neither did Kim Philby, although one night I had a terrible nightmare where I was staggering around a dark room, knocking everything over. I told Sharon about it the next day. “He’s coming in!” she said.

  I was scared of her, rather as a dog is scared of a changeable master, and nothing connected. In the middle of the shoot, I had a two-week hiatus. On the day before I left, we filmed the big love scene. Sharon at work was different from Sharon on a thousand staircases. She expected total control. She marched onto the stage, late, offering no reason. Although I knew the reason. She had DFS—Done Fadeaway Syndrome—a disease pioneered by the patron saint of lateness (white, that is), Faye Dunaway. Sharon was Faye’s heiress, in a direct Tinseltown lineage from Joan Crawford. They were three of the most electric stars.

  Many actresses were late because they were, in fact, terrified to come out of the trailer. Either they would do their make-up over and over again, ripping off individually laid lashes, rubbing cream all over an intricately adjusted face, sobbing into a Kleenex as they wiped themselves, watched by the ashen-faced hair and make-up team before beginning all over again; or they would just sit on the phone, organising business in their bra and panties, while toying with the young assistant directors who were posted outside the trailer doors and instructed to knock every five minutes. But the knocks never changed anything. In fact they often exacerbated a diva’s lateness.

  The fact of the matter was that these women were such perfectionists that over the years they developed a neurotic terror of doing their job. It is not easy to grow older in front of a camera. It sees everything and responds best to flawless skin and innocent eyes. Every tiny line throws a shadow. The lady who didn’t think twice about staying out all night at the bubbling source of her career, now arrives at a quarter to six each morning from a sleepless night in chinstraps, wondering who she is, to confront a face in the glare of the trailer mirror with jaundiced eyes that she and her cohorts must slap and pull and glue and colour into place before she squeezes herself into Wonderbras and corsets and cleverly coloured costumes to become the assertive beautiful star that effortlessly happened to drop by. It is the journey from ingénue to engineer, and the clock is always on. The set was a male world, and few of the men, except the queers, had much sympathy or understanding of how it felt to be a woman in her forties. All they knew is that they didn’t want to shag her or go into overtime.

  Luckily for Sharon, she was still perfect. There was no squeezing or pulling. Her skin glowed. She was too intelligent to have taken to the bottle, and she enjoyed the trip of her own brain more than any chemical stimulant. But still something stopped her from coming out of the trailer, although eventually she stalked onto the set followed by a caravan of hair and make-up, assistant, nanny and child, looking amazing in a raven wig. Her blue eyes danced dangerously under arched brows. Everyone got up as she came in, putting down their magazines and coffees.

  “Gather round,” she ordered.

  “Okay, anyone who doesn’t need to be here, get out now.” This was normally a line that the director said, but Marek had just returned from a visit to the children’s bedroom set that had been finished that day on the next-door stage. Instead of a tasteful colonial nursery from the sixties, the Canadian designer had made the room look like a KMart Christmas commercial with a giant pink dinosaur on top of a Formica cupboard. Marek was now talking intensely with the producer. He was exhausted and just looked up blearily as Sharon strode about the set taking control. “Have you got a full mag?” she asked the camera operator. He shook his head. “Then get one. We want to just shoot on this one. Don’t we, Marek?”

  “Yes, Sharon,” said Marek meekly, but with that English twist of anarchy, as he got up and walked towards her. I loved watching the power-play on a film set. Marek had given his to Sharon. So had I. We had laid our paltry weapons at her feet weeks ago. And all the others who complained behind her back were putty in her presence. She had an unquenchable energy. You didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to see the lightning rods crackle from her fingertips. She was exhilarating and dangerous. The unnecessary people grudgingly slunk into the dark corners of the stage to begin a slow grandmother’s footsteps back to the action while Sharon stepped out of her white towelling dressing gown and stalked over to the bed, totally naked. Her body was extraordinary. Beautiful hips, wide shoulders, a flat stomach, shapely breasts and gazelle legs, all wrapped in porcelain skin; powdered and highlighted, waxed and perfumed. Sharon knew it was worth the wait. This was the money and you could feel the surge of energy engulf the set. This was why we liked the job.

  Several hours later, we were lying naked on a bed in a pool of light from a forest of lamps. I was on top of Sharon, lying between her legs. We both smoked a cigarette, while Sharon’s hairdresser rubbed ice cubes on her nipples and Pat covered up a few spots on my bum. There was a friendly, uncomplicated atmosphere on the set, and we all chatted together as if it were the most natural thing in the world for two people to be frozen in flagrante surrounded by a camera crew. Someone measured the distance between the camera and Sharon’s pussy with a tape measure. The operator practised zooming in on it with his camera. Sharon watched lazily, leaning back so that the camera could get right in. We both knew how to do sex and the scene had been fairly effortless. After icing Sharon’s nipples, the hairdresser blow-dried them with his hairdryer. Everyone laughed and the conversation turned to sex. All the girls complained about men, and the men sniggered proudly at each new story. Bursts of laughter echoed around the stage. Sharon and I were on glittering form.

  “You know what I say when I’m fucking a guy?” said Sharon after the laughter had died down.

  “What?” replied the whole set, like the chorus of a musical.

  “Rupert!” shouted Marek from behind the monitor. “Could you take your position, please?”

  I gave my cigarette to Pat and clambered on top of Sharon as she went on with her story.

  “I say, ‘Stop. Look at me.’”

  I looked at her.

  “Now. Talk to me.”

  “Talk to you?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Communicate,” she said.

  “While we’re fucking?!”

  “And now . . . go in and out real slow.”

  “Oh my God, now I know why I’m gay.”

  “Okay, let’s shoot this please,” shouted Marek. Now our faces were very close, ready to embrace. Our eyes sparkled with manufactured love.

  “Hon,” said Sharon, looking at me adoringly, “I can turn a gay man straight in five minutes!”

  “Two bells!” shouted an assistant. Our lips were nearly touching, half smiles. Our groins locked.

  “How long does it take you to turn a straight man gay?” I whispered.

  “Silence on the set!” shouted another.

  “About ten seconds in some cases,” murmured Sharon.

  “And . . . action!” said Marek, and in and out we went. Real slow.

  CHAPTER 45

  Haitian Hiatus

  Real life stops at the huge closed doors of the sound stage and I was living in a delightful pool of light, in a cardboard universe of spies and lovers, treachery and idealism. The film set is a strange compelling hothouse of period costumes, clocks set at peculiar times, newspapers from long ago. And often when you leave this vivid mirage the real world feels like an abstract fantasy—a film, in fact. But nothing prepared me for the total eclipse that took place when I left A Different Loyalty for my Haitian hiatus.

  On my charity travels I had met an Idaho Indian queen who worked for the Kennedy Foundation. We hit it off at a student conference and he invited me to come to see one of the stars of the Third World health wars, a doctor called Paul Farmer.

  Hollywood couldn’t have been further from Haiti, although Miami was only an hour away from Port-au-Prince. Here the First and Third Worlds rubbed shoulders, divided by a thin st
retch of water upon which floated tax-free islands, millionaires’ yachts and communist Cuba. Strangely, in this corner of the world, the Cold War still raged. It felt like the film I had just left behind. Added to this, everyone has a writer who turns their youthful head. For me it was Graham Greene. Suddenly he was implied in everything I did. Kim Philby was the essence of Greene—the two men were friends—and so was Haiti. Stepping off the plane in Port-au-Prince that day in March was like walking into the freshly written pages of The Comedians.

  I half expected to see Sharon waiting inside the airport surrounded by lights. The chaos, the heat, the noise, the breeze from the overhead fans: all felt like intricate details of a marvellous film. There was a sexy smell of sweat on the customs official as he looked me up and down. I felt like a spy, but he stamped my passport anyway. Announcements in Creole echoed from a clapped-out loudspeaker, and a creaky conveyor belt groaned into action. It sounded like a tractor. Big fat mamas got up and hauled bigger fatter suitcases, held together with a string and a prayer. A group from the Virginia chapter of the Salvation Army gathered around their bossy leader, straight from the pages of Graham Greene or Tennessee Williams. They were off to spread the good news.

  Maybe because travel of any sort—either coming or going—in a place like this was such an event, the atmosphere was charged with a certain hysteria. It was as if the whole feverish crowd was stuck in this broken-down airport, like ghosts trapped in a moment between this world and the next, waiting to be released by a medium with a foreign visa.

  The Oloffson Hotel was at the bottom of the Kenscoff mountain in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. At some point in Haiti’s murky history, the ruling rich lived there in large gabled houses with beautiful gardens. Now these houses had rotted and begun the long slide down the hill, their high walls decorated with broken bottles. The roads were steep, and over the years the rich had retreated higher and higher up the mountain towards the last remaining acres of rainforest at the top, leaving Pétionville to be swallowed up by the endless concrete shanty of Port-au-Prince.