Rupert Everett has reflected on his affair with ‘kindred spirit’ Paula Yates.
In his 2004 memoir Red Carpets and Banana Skin, the actor revealed that he and the TV presenter had an affair that lasted on and off for six years, and while she was married to Bob Geldof.
Paula, who died aged 41 after taking a heroin overdose in 2000, married Bob in 1986 and the couple were plagued by rumours of infidelity throughout their 20-year relationship.
Despite identifying as gay, Everett, 67, said he was instantly attracted to the TV star.
‘She was adorable and beautiful. We were bonded by our sense of drama. We loved things being dramatic and dangerous,’ he gushed in a new interview with The Guardian.
‘She was a fragile rock – tough, but very vulnerable too. We were kindred spirits.’
Everett also said how during his six years with Paula he gained an insight into a wholly different way of life.
Rupert Everett has reflected on his six-year affair with ‘kindred spirit’ Paula Yates while she was married to Bob Geldof; Pictured together on The Big Breakfast in 1995
Paula, who died aged 41 after taking a heroin overdose in 2000, married Bob in 1986 and the couple were plagued by rumours of infidelity throughout their 20-year relationship; Pictured together in 1995
‘Being straight was heaven, because you fitted in so well,’ he admitted, recalling a dinner he and Paula had with the actor Gordon Jackson and his wife which ‘felt like the whole restaurant was celebrating the normalcy of two couples getting together’.
‘Gordon was telling me about getting a mortgage and I remember thinking: God this is fitting in!’
The My Best Friend’s Wedding star has had love affairs with a string of famous women including Bianca Jagger, Susan Sarandon, and Béatrice Dalle ‘with varying degrees of success’.
Reflecting on his hedonistic love life, Everett explained ‘I loved all my relationships with women. I’m not sure they loved it though. Because I was so slippery. Going off with other people.’
‘I just wanted to have more relationships,’ he added. ‘Pretending to feel the right things when you weren’t. I was always shifty. I was always trying to get on to the next thing. No one was ever enough.’
Sixteen years ago things changed when the actor met Brazilian accountant Henrique. The couple married in 2024 despite Everett previously dismissing the institution of marriage and deriding gay marriage in particular as ‘a waste of time’ and ‘beyond tragic’.
Everything about friends’ weddings, he explained in 2020, he found ‘repellent’, and going to stag nights in the early 1980s was ‘one of the most appalling things’ he’d ever experienced.
‘I think making it a legal contract is very, very damaging to a relationship,’ reflected the actor.
The My Best Friend’s Wedding star has had love affairs with a string of famous women including Bianca Jagger, Susan Sarandon, and Béatrice Dalle ‘with varying degrees of success’
‘A relationship has to breathe and live and change, and turn into a different thing every day,’ added Everett. But he did concede his perspective had shifted.
The couple relocated to Wiltshire in 2018 after the actor spent most of his adult life living abroad. They lived with Everett’s mother until her death last year.
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