Have you seen yourself become more of a Prince Charming?

Rupert Everett: In my life? No, I don’t really identify myself with Prince Charming because they film isn’t really an allegory on Hollywood. I guess it’s about everyone getting their ‘happy ever after’ in their career, and I think we all feel a bit cheated out of certain things sometimes. So I feel a bit sympathetic to him on that. He goes in the wrong direction with it, life makes him angry and that’s a sad thing, because life does often make us furious. But again, that’s very profound in the movie, what makes us insurgent, what makes normal people into the villain. I think it’s a really good film in that sense; it has a childish area to it, and something that really works on you on another level for you.

When you’re in the booth, do you have the script in front of you or does the director tell you where you are?

Rupert Everett: Yeah, they show you a big storyboard of the scene that they’ve written out so you know what’s going on.

Do they feed you anything?

Rupert Everett: They do, you read the scene with the director and they play the other parts; but you have an idea on the storyboards what’s going on.

Have you been shooting things all over the world? Is that why you were traveling?

Rupert Everett: Just now, I’ve been making a film. And before that, I wrote a book, an autobiography and I’ve been going around the world promoting that. And before that, I was writing it.

And you’re in Stardust?

Rupert Everett: Stardust is about a parallel universe next door to the real world; it’s a really good film made by Matthew Vaughn. I play a character who’s pushed off a roof at the beginning of the film and then he becomes a ghost. It has some great performances in there – Michelle Pfeiffer’s best performances ever; she becomes really old, 300/400 years old and she’s amazing, she looks incredible, just very good.

What is the time period?

Rupert Everett: The time period is kind of, I should say, 18^th/19^th century, you’re not quite sure when it is. But it’s kind of 19^th century, very 19^th century it takes place – great story.

Was it on green screen?

Rupert Everett: It’s all green screen.

How was that for you?

Rupert Everett: It was so boring, so boring; I’ve never been so bored in my life – and that was my most bored ever. Standing in front of a piece of green screen in a studio; some people do it for months, I only did it for a few weeks. But it really does get you down.

Did any of your characters not on green screen come and do the lines with you?

Rupert Everett: No, because a whole lot of us are dead; every show, someone else died and they all joined this horrible green screen world. And what happens in green screen – the worst thing is it takes forever; the scene, your scene has been shot years ago so there’s all these little dots where this happened and that happens, and you’re so bored you can’t concentrate on what’s going on. And then you get everything wrong; and then this happens there and you have to move your eye up to there – it’s as boring as it gets.

What’s it like seeing the movie?

Rupert Everett: It is amazing when you see the movie.

Have you seen it?

Rupert Everett: Yeah.

What did you think when you saw those scenes?

Rupert Everett: It made me laugh, you can’t take this movie seriously when you’ve been through that. You can’t really look at a movie you’ve been in; you’re always remembering what happened that day when you were doing green screen or anything. It’s difficult to look at a movie, and so this is great; you’ll get carried away by it.

What about seeing your character in Shrek?

Rupert Everett: Yeah, apart from when you first hear your voice in your character, then you get used to it, and you just enjoy the movie. I saw this yesterday and just enjoyed it.

What movie are you working on now?

Rupert Everett: I’m working on a movie called St. Trinians, which is a remake of an old English movie, a series of movies about an English girls school – they’re remaking it.

Did you enjoy the writing process of your book?

Rupert Everett: Very much, yeah. Not so much putting it out, but I enjoyed writing it; putting it out – selling books is a lot harder than selling a movie. You know it takes a lot to get a book moving and you have to promote a lot, and I think selling books and book shops and just getting used to that was quite tough.

But the actual writing process?

Rupert Everett: Yeah, I loved it.

What’s the book about?

Rupert Everett: Me; it’s not really about me. It is an autobiography, but it’s really about the times I’ve been through more than myself.

Why did you write it?

Rupert Everett: It just came about really by chance; I’d written a couple books before, novels and I’d always meant to start writing again. I’d made friends with a journalist, and she encouraged me to start writing down stories I had; and eventually, you go to an agent who took me to some publishers and it all just happened. And I wanted to take some time off from acting and it was a good punctuation mark in that way; I wrote it in the course of about a year and a half and I traveled a lot in that time. It’s very different from acting which is a job you do with a lot of people; when you’re a writer, which is a job you do on your own, I really loved that. I stayed in hotels and wrote in the mornings, and did fun stuff in the afternoons – it was really nice.

What’s the name of it?

Rupert Everett: It’s called Red Carpets and other Banana Skins.

What happened to the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2?

Rupert Everett: She did die.

That’s why she wasn’t in this one; you kept looking at her picture.

Rupert Everett: I kept trying to bring her back; she was a great character, too.

Did you voice a character for Shrek the Halls?

Rupert Everett: Yeah.

What’s it like being a character in the Dylan Dog comic strip? Are they working on an animated feature?

Rupert Everett: They’re working on an animated feature? Are they? No, I didn’t hear about it.

What’s it like having your likeness in the comic book?

Rupert Everett: It was good, we made one film off it called Delamorte Dellamore and we were going to make another one but it never got off the ground. It was great; it’s been great for me in Italy because the mythic comics, people love them.

Do you read them yourself?

Rupert Everett: I have done them; they’re great. I’m not a comic reader, but they are great comics.

Is there a chance you could return in Shrek 4?

Rupert Everett: Yes there’s a chance; there’s always a chance.

Is it going to happen?

Rupert Everett: You’ll have to wait and see.