Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins

Book excerpt: 'Hilariously honest. . . a kind of rake's progress' Daily Mail An element of drama has always attended Rupert Everett, even before he swept to fame with his outstanding performance in 'Another Country'. He has spent his life surrounded by extraordinary people, and witnessed extraordinary events. He was in Moscow during the fall of communism; in Berlin the night the wall came down; and in downtown Manhattan on September 11th. By the age of 17 he was friends with Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger, and since then he has been up close and personal with some of the most famous women in the world: Julia Roberts, Madonna, Sharon Stone and Donatella Versace. Whether sweeping the floor for the Royal Shakespeare Company or co-starring with Faye Dunaway and an orang-utan in 'Dunstan Checks In' (they both took ages to get ready), Rupert Everett always brings as much energy and talent to his life as he does to his career. A superb raconteur and a keen observer of human folly (especially his own), Rupert Everett turns his life into a captivating story of love, fame, glamour, gossip and drama. Praise for Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins 'He has an almost fanatical loyalty to the concept of enjoyment, to the detriment, it might be argued, of his art, though to the great enrichment of his being; and for Rupert, as he makes clear in this continuously brilliant memoir, the best theatrical autobiography since Noël Coward's Present Indicative, acting is being...a superb and unexpectedly inspiring achievement' Simon Callow, Guardian 'Lush, profoundly reflective, and thoroughly satisfying...a heady triumph of observation and reverie' Independent 'What makes this autobiography a (novelistic) masterpiece is the way he is acutely aware of the melancholia and pain that are the other side of hedonism's coin' Daily Telegraph