The Rupert Everett School of Stalking
Jan 18, 2007 5:29:48 GMT
Post by ukelelehip on Jan 18, 2007 5:29:48 GMT
This made me laugh so hard, I cried. I myself am fond of 'stage dooring' so this is also extremely embarrassing... 
This week, the Daily Mail has been serialising actor Rupert Everett's extravagantly funny and stylish memoirs. Here, in our final extract, he reveals his secret life as a ruthless practical joker and swooningly obsessive theatre fan...
During the blistering summer of 1976, while I was on a student course at Stratford-on-Avon, I saw Ian McKellen in Macbeth. For the first time in my life, I became an obsessive fan. It was fun, but it was a full-time job. I hung around the stage door at night with all the other freaks, invariably women. We huddled in a pool of light like lost souls.
Being a fan meant that you could utterly abandon your own life. You were ‘born again’. Your whole existence became the play and the brief contact you had with your saviour at the stage door.
When Ian appeared, the ladies whined and snivelled, arms outstretched for the miracle of physical contact. In the brief moment of climax, cards, cakes and keepsakes fell on him like a plague of locusts and then it was over. My technique was more menacing. I positioned myself to full advantage, stood back and stared. I never asked him to sign anything.
Ian disappeared into the night and the ladies shuffled off, clucking. When they were all gone I dived after him into the darkness, darting in and out of the shadows like the hero in an Enid Blyton novel as I tracked my star on the walk home or to the pub.
Sometimes, if I woke early enough (I had ripped a copy of the rehearsal schedule off the wall backstage so I knew his every move) I even waited for him to leave his house in the mornings and tracked him to the rehearsal room. If he spotted me, I pretended I had lost something in the rubbish. I was quite macabre.
Then, six months later, back in London and studying at drama school, I was passing the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden and saw a poster announcing Macbeth as part of the coming season. It was the same production I had seen in Stratford, starring Ian and Judi Dench. I couldn’t believe my luck. I dashed inside and got a job tearing tickets.
I loved that job; I couldn’t wait to get there every night. I tore the tickets, I sold the programmes and was thoroughly smug with the punters. As soon as the three-minute buzzer rang, I herded them unceremoniously into the theatre and closed the black felt curtains behind them with a self-important swish.
Any latecomers were subjected to my withering disapproval and, depending on my mood, I would either let them go in during the scene change, or not. Sometimes I just sent them home.
But it was not all plain sailing. By the end of the first week I received a complaint via the house manager from the leading actor that I was putting him off.
I used to look, perhaps a shade too intensely, through the crack in those felt curtains, like an imprisoned wife in purdah, making eyes at Ian on the stage as his clothes were torn from him by the little witches in their dirty lace mittens.
Pretty soon I had manoeuvred my way into a backstage position where I got to kneel by the stage and take the three little voodoo dolls from Judi Dench’s hands as she rushed into the wings after the mad scene. Then I had to take the dolls into the dressing rooms during the interval.
I acted very business-like on these trips, but still managed to look sultry as I passed through the men’s dressing room where Ian sat half-naked and smoking in front of the mirror. The stalker was in the house!
I think he was initially quite freaked out, but I kept my head down and bided my time. I finally managed to manoeuvre my way on to the back of his scooter and sped off towards a late-night tete a tete in Camberwell.
I remember the look of fury on the face of his other most persistent fan, Sue. I had tortured this girl since my elevation to ticket-tearer. She was tall, slightly hunched, with pebble glasses, a high forehead and long scarves that dragged on the floor.
She was actually quite sweet, although sometimes she lashed out at Ian and had to be restrained. I will never forget her utter disbelief as I nonchalantly strapped on Ian’s spare helmet, a tartan Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, and put my hands around his waist before speeding off. You could have knocked her over with a feather.
But she needn’t have worried. There is an unbridgeable gulf between the fan and the friend. The fan cannot live without the framework of the play, and outside the security of tickets and programmes and latecomers, I was a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car (or a scooter, in this case).
I was a different person around him, and however valiantly he tried to cajole me out of my speechless state, I was stuck in a relationship that was divided by footlights.
Once, a year or so later, we were at his house and he was sorting out his make-up for some show he was preparing. It was a Saturday afternoon. We drank a bottle of wine. I rearranged the make-up sticks and he sorted out his beards and sideburns. Soon, we drunkenly began to make ourselves up.
I painted on a Ziggy Stardust look with a lightning bolt across my face. He was a chalk-white geisha. We sprayed ourselves with fixative and then Ian suggested we play rock stars and fans.
Unfortunately, improvisation was not proving to be my strongest suit at drama school, let alone in my hero’s flat, and this latest reversal of roles, far from freeing me up, as Ian had perhaps imagined, made me feel incredibly self-conscious.
Suddenly, I was standing on the sofa with a stringless guitar over a painted body, while Ian was writhing on the floor screaming. This man could certainly improvise! After a moment he stopped. ‘Go on then. Say something!’ he said, but my mind was a blank.
Finally, I put one arm out, struck an imaginary chord and lamely whimpered, ‘Good evening, Camberwell!’ before bursting into floods of tears. The Macbeth season ended, and I became a dresser at the Aldwych Theatre. I dressed Charles Dance, John Nettles and, for a brief moment, Alan Howard.
It was not a very savoury job. The play was Coriolanus and there was a lot of fighting. I had to pick up my artiste’s sweaty underwear each night and take it to be washed. It felt like a bit of a comedown after picking up Judi’s voodoo dolls.
In the dressing room next to me worked another dresser, Joe McKenna, a tiny, thin boy from Glasgow. I was soon to discover that Joe was more famous than some of the actors he dressed, as he had played Ken Barlow’s son on Coronation Street.
We became best friends, and every night we took the bus home while I regaled him with stories about my life. Some were true and others were not.
I did make up some terrible lies, the most ornate of which was that I was conducting an affair with Rudolf Nureyev, who was performing at the English National Opera. I would rather grandly get off the bus by St Martin’s Lane and tell Joe I was off to meet Rudolf.
One night he followed me. I was stalking with the other fans outside the stage door. Rudolf came out in thigh boots and a pork pie hat. We fans crowded around him as he made his way towards his bright yellow sports car.
He winked at me as he got in. I smiled hopelessly. Then he sped off and the fans dissolved back into the real world. Suddenly, who should I see across the road, hiding behind a car, but Joe.
We faced each other across the street. There was an awkward silence, and then Joe proceeded to lay into me. ‘Not a word of the f*****g truth comes out of your mouth,’ he screamed.
I could hardly breathe. It is, after all, utterly exasperating to be caught out in the face of such a fantastical lie. My voice quavered; I was on the verge of tears. ‘Listen, Joe,’ I gasped, ‘I may have lied about this. But not everything’s a lie.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Joe, marching off through the traffic and jumping on to a bus. ‘You’re sheer bulls***.’
‘Okay, so I’m not having an affair with Rudolf Nureyev,’ I shouted, running to catch up, ‘but I am s****ing Ian McKellen, I swear!’
It was too late. The bus lurched off towards Trafalgar Square, Joe staring glacially down at me.
This week, the Daily Mail has been serialising actor Rupert Everett's extravagantly funny and stylish memoirs. Here, in our final extract, he reveals his secret life as a ruthless practical joker and swooningly obsessive theatre fan...
During the blistering summer of 1976, while I was on a student course at Stratford-on-Avon, I saw Ian McKellen in Macbeth. For the first time in my life, I became an obsessive fan. It was fun, but it was a full-time job. I hung around the stage door at night with all the other freaks, invariably women. We huddled in a pool of light like lost souls.
Being a fan meant that you could utterly abandon your own life. You were ‘born again’. Your whole existence became the play and the brief contact you had with your saviour at the stage door.
When Ian appeared, the ladies whined and snivelled, arms outstretched for the miracle of physical contact. In the brief moment of climax, cards, cakes and keepsakes fell on him like a plague of locusts and then it was over. My technique was more menacing. I positioned myself to full advantage, stood back and stared. I never asked him to sign anything.
Ian disappeared into the night and the ladies shuffled off, clucking. When they were all gone I dived after him into the darkness, darting in and out of the shadows like the hero in an Enid Blyton novel as I tracked my star on the walk home or to the pub.
Sometimes, if I woke early enough (I had ripped a copy of the rehearsal schedule off the wall backstage so I knew his every move) I even waited for him to leave his house in the mornings and tracked him to the rehearsal room. If he spotted me, I pretended I had lost something in the rubbish. I was quite macabre.
Then, six months later, back in London and studying at drama school, I was passing the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden and saw a poster announcing Macbeth as part of the coming season. It was the same production I had seen in Stratford, starring Ian and Judi Dench. I couldn’t believe my luck. I dashed inside and got a job tearing tickets.
I loved that job; I couldn’t wait to get there every night. I tore the tickets, I sold the programmes and was thoroughly smug with the punters. As soon as the three-minute buzzer rang, I herded them unceremoniously into the theatre and closed the black felt curtains behind them with a self-important swish.
Any latecomers were subjected to my withering disapproval and, depending on my mood, I would either let them go in during the scene change, or not. Sometimes I just sent them home.
But it was not all plain sailing. By the end of the first week I received a complaint via the house manager from the leading actor that I was putting him off.
I used to look, perhaps a shade too intensely, through the crack in those felt curtains, like an imprisoned wife in purdah, making eyes at Ian on the stage as his clothes were torn from him by the little witches in their dirty lace mittens.
Pretty soon I had manoeuvred my way into a backstage position where I got to kneel by the stage and take the three little voodoo dolls from Judi Dench’s hands as she rushed into the wings after the mad scene. Then I had to take the dolls into the dressing rooms during the interval.
I acted very business-like on these trips, but still managed to look sultry as I passed through the men’s dressing room where Ian sat half-naked and smoking in front of the mirror. The stalker was in the house!
I think he was initially quite freaked out, but I kept my head down and bided my time. I finally managed to manoeuvre my way on to the back of his scooter and sped off towards a late-night tete a tete in Camberwell.
I remember the look of fury on the face of his other most persistent fan, Sue. I had tortured this girl since my elevation to ticket-tearer. She was tall, slightly hunched, with pebble glasses, a high forehead and long scarves that dragged on the floor.
She was actually quite sweet, although sometimes she lashed out at Ian and had to be restrained. I will never forget her utter disbelief as I nonchalantly strapped on Ian’s spare helmet, a tartan Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, and put my hands around his waist before speeding off. You could have knocked her over with a feather.
But she needn’t have worried. There is an unbridgeable gulf between the fan and the friend. The fan cannot live without the framework of the play, and outside the security of tickets and programmes and latecomers, I was a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car (or a scooter, in this case).
I was a different person around him, and however valiantly he tried to cajole me out of my speechless state, I was stuck in a relationship that was divided by footlights.
Once, a year or so later, we were at his house and he was sorting out his make-up for some show he was preparing. It was a Saturday afternoon. We drank a bottle of wine. I rearranged the make-up sticks and he sorted out his beards and sideburns. Soon, we drunkenly began to make ourselves up.
I painted on a Ziggy Stardust look with a lightning bolt across my face. He was a chalk-white geisha. We sprayed ourselves with fixative and then Ian suggested we play rock stars and fans.
Unfortunately, improvisation was not proving to be my strongest suit at drama school, let alone in my hero’s flat, and this latest reversal of roles, far from freeing me up, as Ian had perhaps imagined, made me feel incredibly self-conscious.
Suddenly, I was standing on the sofa with a stringless guitar over a painted body, while Ian was writhing on the floor screaming. This man could certainly improvise! After a moment he stopped. ‘Go on then. Say something!’ he said, but my mind was a blank.
Finally, I put one arm out, struck an imaginary chord and lamely whimpered, ‘Good evening, Camberwell!’ before bursting into floods of tears. The Macbeth season ended, and I became a dresser at the Aldwych Theatre. I dressed Charles Dance, John Nettles and, for a brief moment, Alan Howard.
It was not a very savoury job. The play was Coriolanus and there was a lot of fighting. I had to pick up my artiste’s sweaty underwear each night and take it to be washed. It felt like a bit of a comedown after picking up Judi’s voodoo dolls.
In the dressing room next to me worked another dresser, Joe McKenna, a tiny, thin boy from Glasgow. I was soon to discover that Joe was more famous than some of the actors he dressed, as he had played Ken Barlow’s son on Coronation Street.
We became best friends, and every night we took the bus home while I regaled him with stories about my life. Some were true and others were not.
I did make up some terrible lies, the most ornate of which was that I was conducting an affair with Rudolf Nureyev, who was performing at the English National Opera. I would rather grandly get off the bus by St Martin’s Lane and tell Joe I was off to meet Rudolf.
One night he followed me. I was stalking with the other fans outside the stage door. Rudolf came out in thigh boots and a pork pie hat. We fans crowded around him as he made his way towards his bright yellow sports car.
He winked at me as he got in. I smiled hopelessly. Then he sped off and the fans dissolved back into the real world. Suddenly, who should I see across the road, hiding behind a car, but Joe.
We faced each other across the street. There was an awkward silence, and then Joe proceeded to lay into me. ‘Not a word of the f*****g truth comes out of your mouth,’ he screamed.
I could hardly breathe. It is, after all, utterly exasperating to be caught out in the face of such a fantastical lie. My voice quavered; I was on the verge of tears. ‘Listen, Joe,’ I gasped, ‘I may have lied about this. But not everything’s a lie.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Joe, marching off through the traffic and jumping on to a bus. ‘You’re sheer bulls***.’
‘Okay, so I’m not having an affair with Rudolf Nureyev,’ I shouted, running to catch up, ‘but I am s****ing Ian McKellen, I swear!’
It was too late. The bus lurched off towards Trafalgar Square, Joe staring glacially down at me.
But after reading this, I'm glad I did because that was just hilarious!
;D