Rupert Everett: leading man on the rise.

Who would have guessed that playing the gay best friend could make you the hottest actor in Hollywood? Don Knotts would have done it years ago. But that's what happened to Rupert Everett, the lanky and louche Brit whose career shot into hyperdrive after the success last summer of My Best Friend's Wedding, in which he appeared as Julia Roberts's best friend who wasn't getting married.

An out actor of some long standing, Everett had made an early splash as England's favorite modern-day turncoat, playing gay Guy Burgess in Another Country, and was known in this country for appearances as truculent upper-class ne'er-do-wells in TV miniseries such as Princess Daisy.

Everett's hilarious and sexy performance opposite America's sweetheart changed all that -- or at least a substantial part of it. Not only was he being touted as a palpable new romantic leading man, but he was also being heralded as the first out gay actor to be so. How is he bearing up under this brand-new burden? And will his frankness help or hinder this megacareer in the making? Such notions were discussed after a recent performance of his latest effort -- not a big-budget, big-gun action movie or a remake of a Cary Grant picture but a London stage revival of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. You may know it from its filmed title, Boom! There is a leading-man role, once played on stage by Tab Hunter and on film by Richard Burton. Rupert's not playing that. He's in the part once played by Tallulah Bankhead and Elizabeth Taylor. And he plays it in a kind of androgynous drag he describes as "almost Kabuki," which was, I think, Williams's intent, although it's never been played the way he wrote it.

Is it wise to be doing this sort of thing now, on the heels of the mainstream success of My Rest Friend's Wedding.? You know, it's very difficult to be able to assess what one's position is. The film has been so successful, but I really don't know where my success comes in with it. It would be vain of me to imagine it's anything but Julia's success. I'm in on her coattails. Of course, in Hollywood you're expected to consolidate success and make it better and bigger. But I'm an actor, and I go where the parts are.

Even if it's back to the stage in a flamboyant role? Well, I had done this part before, actually. We were committed to this production long before anyone could have predicted the success of the film. It's a wonderful, unexplored Tennessee Williams piece, very much worth doing.

But haven't they been coming to you with offers? After all, you are the hot new flavor. Odd you should use that phrase. I've been offered a lot of cannibals lately -- I mean, characters who are cannibals. Why this has turned up in several scripts I couldn't say. Perhaps they think, "He played that gay part. Let's see what else he will eat. "

So you haven't been inundated with leading-men roles? Not really, no.

Do you think that filmmakers have a problem with an audience's knowing the leading man's sexuality, MA this will somehow put a crimp in the love scenes? The problem is not with the total audience. The problem is with men. Women are much more intelligent. Men have determined that all women want is to be fucked, because that's all men think about. This man on-screen must fulfill their fantasies. But that's not all women think about. They know there is more to a relationship, even an on-screen relationship. But men count more for the audience than women. It's said that women choose the movie a couple are going to see, but in fact women always choose a movie that they feel the man is going to want to see. So the mythical male point of view remains dominant.

How do we fix this, we of the never-never? If there is one film that gets it right, it'll go well toward changing it. If a legless actor is well-used in the right movie, it will work, and the audience win ignore everything they know.

Might you be plotting such a film as we speak? Well, I am writing things, but I have no particular campaign in mind. I don't really mind which way it goes, whether I play gay or straight, because I want to give people what they want rather than what I want. Planning is an absolute waste of time.

People would probably enjoy seeing you with Julia again, perhaps in a sequel. We all wondered what might happen to those two people. Actually, the thing I am writing is for Julia.

That would be Martha and Arthur? Yes, although it's not a sequel to Wedding. We got on really well and both, decided we should find something else for us to do in the same vein. So it's about a famous sort of Hollywood couple -- fictional, I hasten to add. They are great friends. He's an action star, and she's the biggest star. He is gay, and she is not. They are making their first film together, in which they play Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. It's a romantic comedy about their personal love story and how their lives change.

What's the "Jane Bond" movie I keep hearing about? I think it's called PS I Love You. Something else I'm writing, with a partner. It's about a spy who is gay, so it has somehow acquired the code name "Jane Bond."

James Bond never shuck me as a big safe-sex advocate. How would a gay James handle this? in fact, how does a gay James Bond deal with sex for the mass audience? Firstly, it's important to know that we're not trying to make a pastiche joke about James Bond's being gay. Actually our script is a return to the original concept in the Bond books, in which he is a really hard, nearly psychotic killer.

Oh, good. We need more of those gay role models. [Laughs] Yes, well, be that as it may, he's a really cold, hard-edged animal. We're hoping to make a serious action thriller where the character happens to be gay. And he falls in love at the end.

Being Bondian, does he have many conquests along the way? Oh, yes, but not just men. Women as well. [Laughs] He's a complete professional.

He's already one step ahead of The Jackal. He never got do more than kiss Stephen Spinella. Well, that's part of it, you know. Sex is one of his professional tools, if you will. I'm afraid the press on this has been a bit wrong. Somebody campy being James Bond is a one-joke idea. I'd like it to be like a John Woo movie.

Forgive me for asking, but -- have you pitched Woo? I can't wait to meet him.

So that's what you're developing. What is being developed for you? As I said, I go where the parts are. I keep hearing about things, but...

There's talk of a biography of Halston. Mmm. That's a fantastic script. What a terrific self-invention he was.

And you've been offered the Peter Lawford role in HBO's Rat Pack movie? Yes, but I'm not particularly interested. Actually, I'm trying to concentrate on getting my writing stuff buckled down. The best thing that has happened to me as a result of this recent success is the writing opportunity it has given me. You know, you always bang on as a disgruntled actor wanting to do something you like. And now I have the chance to create some things of my own. Trying to write by day and act in the theater at night has been too difficult. So I want to concentrate on the writing. [Pauses) But Halston is definitely a temptation.

That's not the first time I've heard someone say that. But that's another story. I do have another film finished. It's a little London picture called B-Monkey. I play a middle-class drug dealer in a three-way relationship. I'm a bisexual in that one. Variety, you know,

The untrained ear might think there have been nothing but sexuality-driven rules coming your way lately. Do you think coming out so early in your career could be the reason? Hard to say. My career has always been different.

Coming out when you did was certainly different. How did that happen? It wasn't a major pronouncement or a big press issue. I didn't discuss it publicly until I felt really completely gay, and that didn't happen until I was 26, when I had my last girlfriend. At the point that it appeared publicly, in an interview, I was living in Paris with a guy. It didn't seem to be much of an issue at all in France, although I know it made more of an impact at home.

Do you think it cost you work? It really is very difficult to say, because I don't know. I came to California to break into American movies. But it was not the time for someone like me. It was the era of the Brat Pack [actors like Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matthew Broderick]. There was no market for someone like me. There were no roles I could play, gay or straight. What with 1992 on the way in Europe, the year of unification and European cinema coming together, I went home to get myself a film career. Of course, none of that ever happened in Europe. But I did manage to get myself a European career. Then I had dead time in the U.K. because none of these film were exploited outside of Europe. So I did theater but no films. Then I got lucky with Robert Altman.

With Ready to Wear (Pret-a-Porter)? Yes. Altman didn't care if you were gay or not. What I mean is, if it had been an issue, it would not have been one for Altman. Then I did the orangutan movie.

That would be Dunston Checks in, directed by Ken Kwapis, in which one critic called your performance an homage to [the British comic actor] Terry-Thomas. Kind of him to remember.

During the downtime you also wrote a novel [Hello Darling, Are You Working.?], which was an account of a British actor living in Paris who had a background in prostitution and a foreground in heavy drugs. I don't suppose this was semiautobiographical? You know, I discussed my personal life with another magazine, not a gay one, and it distressed my family so utterly and got me into so much trouble that I hesitate to go into it anymore. Parts of the novel were taken from my life, of course. I had had a success in television and had been pondering the difference between a prostitute and a television star. I was looking for a way to examine this, and the novel happened.

And what is the difference? Ah! [Laughs] The novel is still in print, you know.

Do you find that, in the flush of your recent success, women are finding you more attractive? Women?

Do any of them view you as a challenge? None of the women I know. They don't come on to me, if that's what you mean. I mean, people are very nice to me. But [Laughing) ... no.

You don't seem terribly concerned about carrying the cudgels of the out actor, of being out and still getting the Harrison Ford parts. I think Harrison Ford will continue to get them. I don't know that I'd ever be suited for them. For another thing I do feel that an actor shouldn't have too many allusions to sexuality in public life. His work should be about his work.

So you're content to be a homosexual professional instead of a professional homosexual? That's a pleasantly clinical way to put it. I'm very excited about this success, but I have no illusions about what it can mean.