Rupert Everett details ‘magical’ 1970s as a ‘leather queen’ when being gay ‘only just legalised’
"You could find a Duke chatting with a plumber" added Rupe of his fave gay bar in Earl's Court
Rupert Everett has been reminiscing about his days as a self-described “leather queen” in 1970s London… and it sounds like a riot!
The My Policeman star recalled the era in rich detail during a recent appearance on Paloma Faith‘s Mad, Sad & Bad podcast.
It seems that while the 65-year-old rose to fame in the 80s opposite Colin Firth in the film Another Country, his life pre-fame sounds equally cinematic.
“You could find a Duke chatting with a plumber” – Rupert Everett
The veteran actor told the ‘Picking Up the Pieces’ singer Paloma: “Being gay, for example, in the old days, in the 70s, was quite a magical thing, considering it was only just legalised…
“I loved being a leather queen, right from an early age. And there was this bar in Earl’s Court called the Colehern. And in it, it was ageless, classless and raceless, weirdly enough. And because the gay scene was so small, anybody who had the faintest proclivity went there – there were only a few places to go.”
“So you could find, you know, a Duke chatting with a plumber,” explained the star of The Happy Prince, adding: “You still kind of felt afraid, especially if you were young, that people would see you going in.”
The 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21.
In the interview, the My Best Friend’s Wedding star also discussed responding to criticism of his performances.
“I used to do awful things to the punters,” he recalled. “I remember one couple wrote me a letter saying they couldn’t hear my performance. And I was so, well I was stoned apart from anything else. I wrote a letter (back) saying ‘so sorry to hear about your problem with the audibility of my performance, please accept my heartfelt apology’ and I turned over the page and cut a wedge of my pubes and I sellotaped them to the other side and said ‘and these few pubic hairs’ in the hope of… I just don’t know. It’s mad, but I [looking back] I should’ve worked on my audibility.”