Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins: The Autobiography [Hardcover]

Rupert Everett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2007

Revealing himself to be a consummate storyteller, stage and screen star Everett ("My Best Friend's Wedding") pens a delightfully witty memoir in which he reveals his life experiences as an up-and-coming actor, detailing everything from the eccentricities of the British upper class to the madness of Hollywood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Everett's performance in 1997's My Best Friend's Wedding turned the camaraderie between gay men and straight women into a mainstream pop culture staple. However, 2000's The Next Best Thing landed with a thud, and Everett quickly exited the rarefied air of stardom. Reading his new memoir, the veteran actor of stage and screen oozes rakish charm, a gossipy court jester providing wickedly witty—if not particularly consequential—commentary on show business shenanigans. Everett glibly dishes the dirt on such co-stars as Faye Dunaway, who Everett confides has earned the nickname done fade away among backstage insiders, and Sharon Stone, who coaches the skeptical Everett on channeling the aura of a character. Everett, whose family background steeped him in an Edwardian stiff-upper-lip ethos, does occasionally pause for reflection on pain and loss, especially his experiences in the waning days of the South Beach party scene. A guilty pleasure, albeit a rather sophisticated and tony offshoot of the species, this will primarily appeal to listeners who appreciate the E! cable network and In Style magazine.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

His acting experience makes him an obvious choice as a narrator. Everett delivers his memoir is a soft and sinewy voice that encourages listeners to believe they're getting an insider's view. With ease, he sets aside his English accent in order to make clear transitions between his narrative and character voices. (Audio File 2007) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (January 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446579637
• ISBN-13: 978-0446579636
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Is that all there is?, August 18, 2007

By 

Regular Reader (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins: The Autobiography (Hardcover)

To judge from this book, between his occasional acting jobs, Rupert Everett met a lot of famous people, got very drunk, and indulged in anything (or anyone) offered to him. There are enough names dropped to fill several memoirs, and so many of them became "close friends" that I ended up wondering if Everett, like Louis XIV, never spent a single moment alone. He "adores" everyone and they presumably adore him; he finally sums it up himself when he says that in his circle, most friends don't last more than 5 minutes. He seems to have been constantly in motion as he collected all these best friends in far-flung corners of the world, and it's easy to lose track of the who/what/why/when of the book.

Everett is an experienced writer (though his novels barely get a passing mention)and he writes well. His descriptions of people and places are precise, witty and evocative. But the anecdotes are too practiced and embellished, well polished for talk shows and dinner parties, and I didn't believe half the book really happened in such well-formed anecdotes. He is at his best describing the backstage warfare of the theater and the hothouse atmosphere of a film set, but his frequent refrain of "back then" or "in those days" made me think the novelist was at work, painting a world of generations ago, not a decade or two.

The ultimate test of an autobiograpy is the picture that emerges of the author. Everett comes across as glib, self-indulgent, and at times unprofessional. We learn nothing of his inner life. As a member of the "just do it" school, he has nothing to say about the craft of acting, a job he aspired to from childhood, and with a couple of exceptions we don't even learn the names of the people he was intimately attached to, which is to say sleeping with for protracted periods of time. He doesn't dwell much on the loss of friends to AIDS and is at times a little flippant in discussing it. He seems more upset over the demise of the South Beach party scene, and the only time he expresses true human emotion is when his dog dies.

I have nothing against Rupert Everett; in fact, I like him on screen and I respect him for being openly gay even when it hurt his career. But his book simply shows how far good looks, celebrity, and knowing the right people can carry someone in our gossip-crazy world. I thought he was better than this.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, January 2, 2007

By 

Frances Lynn "Author, Crushed and Frantic" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins: The Autobiography (Hardcover)

I first clapped eyes on Rupert Everett when he exploded on the London scene in the late Seventies. I was vegetating at a smart sit down dinner for Andy Warhol in the newly refurbished Casserole restaurant on Kings Road. It used to be a nice ordinary restaurant, populated mainly by drugged out members of the British aristocracy, where you could sit at wooden tables and fall happily into your soup. Then, Nicki Haslam, the social interior decorator put white billowing tents on the ceiling, transforming the restaurant into a pretentious Bedouin styled scenario.

'The restaurant was packed. There was nowhere to sit but I was about to fall down, so I squeezed on to the edge of a banquette and had a quick nap. A few minutes later I opened my eyes to find three extra-ordinary faces looking at me with amusement. Lady Diana Cooper wore a hat like a medium's lampshade with long white tassels. Next to her sat Andy Warhol under a weird peroxide wig, plonked the wrong way round on his head, and Bianca Jagger was sleek and glowing beside me with delicious smelling pomade in her hair. We introduced ourselves and I apologised with half-open eyes for the intrusion,' is a quote from "Red Carpets and other banana skins", Rupert Everett's recently published autobiography.

My memory has it that Rupert stormed into the restaurant and brazenly plonked himself down next to Bianca and stole the show. All eyes were on him as this handsome looking intruder chatted her up like there was no tomorrow. But, "Red Carpets and other banana skins" is Rupert's autobiography not mine.

Rupert Everett is a gifted actor, whose role as Guy Bennett in "Another Country" in 1984 blasted him to international stardom. Since then, he has worked periodically on the stage, specifically for Glasgow Citizens, and appeared in countless 'A' list movies including "Dance With A Stranger", "The madness of King George III" and wowed Hollywood for his work on "My Best Friend's Wedding", in which he portrayed Julia Robert's gay best friend. In 2007, he will be seen in Matthew Vaughn's new film, "Stardust", in which he co-stars with Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and "Shrek III", in which his distinctive voice again provides the Prince Charming role.

Rupert ('Roopie Poopie' to his friends) is unlike the majority of modern day celebrities who hire ghostwriters to script their life stories. Unlike the Jordans of this world, he has physically written his autobiography, titled "Red Carpets and other banana skins", and has done a very good job too. He's primarily an actor but his life story is so well written, he could easily cross over into becoming a professional writer if his parts dry up. But, as he is a character actor as well as a leading man, that concept seems highly unlikely.

I gobbled up Rupert Everett's exhilarating, celebrity stuffed life story. I couldn't put it down. For me, I thought the early chapters about his formative years were the most interesting. One really gets to know the author when he writes amusingly about his childhood and education: prep school, followed by Ampleforth, the catholic public boarding school, where he was educated by monks. Rupert was brought up by his upper-class parents in 'an old pink farmhouse with a moat, surrounded by the cornfields of Essex.' His father was a major in the Duke of Edinburgh's Wiltshire regiment before becoming a stockbroker. It's surprising that Rupert turned out to be so artistic. But, the first film his mother took him to see was 'Mary Poppins', which made a huge impression on him. In later years he would play Julie Andrew's son in "Duet For One".

'And then when Mary Poppins flew effortlessly down into the film something changed for ever. Was it that Julie Andrews looked and behaved somewhat like my mother?' Rupert recalls.

Rupert Everett's CV boasts a string of beautiful girlfriends, including a tempestuous love affair with Beatrice Dalle, the French actress. Unfortunately for his female fans, he is now totally gay. His showbusiness anecdotes about Dalle and his other famous girlfriends, i.e. Madonna, Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone and Doniatella Versace are insightful, which isn't surprising as these famous women are amongst his closest friends. Although Rupert didn't dish the dirt in his book, he made up for it by writing intrusive anecdotes about his celebrity friends. 'Madonna had a barbecue at her beautiful house on the bay.. it stood in front of a huge expanse of sea and sky and had a strange, uninhabited feeling. You wouldn't know she lived there; there was nothing personal within it.'

Rupert is an astute observer and a witty commentator about the wild escapades in his glamorous life. He's definitely a man who loves people, and has a gift for wittily writing about them without being vindictive or bitchy. He also knows how to laugh at himself. When he tried internet dating, he writes: 'In France at that time there was a thing called the mintel, which was like a computer, connected to your telephone. There was a screen and a keyboard and you could cruise online, so in the evenings I would make contact with people all over the region, then Mo and I would set out in the car with our map, to villages in the Alpes Maritimes, or to some suburb of Marseilles, only to find that the young Olympic athlete who had written so disarmingly about his sexual agility was in fact a roly-poly baker who would be hard pushed to touches his toes, let alone anything else.' Mo was his beloved black labrador, and when he died, Rupert wrote so movingly about losing his best friend, I cried.

"Red Carpets and other banana skins" is a well-written and fast paced read about an iconoclastic thespian's exciting life, and who knows? A chapter of the book might one day be adapted for Rupert's coming of age story. He would ideally like to make a movie about his encounter with a drag queen in the Bois de Boulogne when he was a boy. If the film turns out to be as funny, vivid, thrilling and sophisticated as his autobiography, it will be definitely worth viewing.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Pretentious Or Self-Important, April 13, 2007

By 

B. Merritt "filmreviewstew.com" (WWW.FILMREVIEWSTEW.COM, Pacific Grove, California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins: The Autobiography (Hardcover)

"Caution" is the best word used when approaching an autobiography about an actor who's still living, especially when that autobiography is written by the actor himself. Pretentiousness and self-importance are often affiliated with those who believe their acting gives them license to note how they "have affected the world around them."

I "cautiously" cracked open this book and began reading, wondering if I might throw it aside in disgust. But I didn't. Mr. Everett doesn't fall into the pretentious or self-important pit, but instead notes how the world manipulated him and how he came out the other end.

Starting with his days at a religious school, Rupert quickly learns that religion isn't for him. He finds the school overly-strict because "like bowel movements, punishment was always dictated at the appropriate time" (that's not the exact quote but the meaning is there).

Being gay was also an issue as he grows into manhood ("queenhood?") and then eventually learns the terribleness of the impending AIDS epidemic. Friends fall to the disease and Rupert wonders if he'll be the next one caught in its death-trap.

Mr. Everett also doesn't spout off all of the fantastic movies he's been in and instead gets us into the dirt on those films that were less than stellar. Falling into and out of the theater, Rupert Everett stumbles and swaggers through films, plays, and voice overs (he was the voice of Prince Charming in Shrek 2). He sugarcoats nothing, including his elicit drug use, alcohol abuse, and his interactions with stars great and small (from Elizabeth Taylor to director Marek Kanievska).

There is a bit of name-dropping toward the middle and end of the book, as well as some scattered thoughts about travels hither and thither, but the strong writing and its excellent insiders view make this autobiography a surprising winner.