Actor Rupert Everett has joined Stephen Fry in urging the prime minister, David Cameron, to orchestrate a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics in protest at Russian anti-gay laws banning the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations".
Everett said he agreed "absolutely" with an open letter from the broadcaster and writer urging Britain to boycott the Winter Olympics.
"It feels terrible to have to observe all this stuff going on," said Everett. "If you are gay in Russia you don't know anything about anything. You have no idea Aids exists because there's no information. You live very secretly. If anyone finds out you are gay you are liable to be beaten up, or killed, or forced to commit suicide."
Everett was speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival about his memoir, in which he narrates an episode when he was taken, as part of a UN delegation, to a Russian hospital. He recounts being told by activists that gay people seeking treatment for HIV/Aids are obliged, because of homophobia in the healthcare system, to pretend they are drug users in order to secure treatment. "The system there is very, very cruel," he said. "The situation with homosexuality is coming to a horrible head."
Everett, who has lived in Russia, attributed the act, which was signed into law by President Vladimir Putin in June, to the continued grip of religious conservatism. But he also hit out at the Roman Catholic church – part of the "foundation of my life" but also a "horrible, judgmental, finger-pointing suffering-obsessed religion which I don't think has anything to do with the Christian message".
"Various things it's completely ruined," he said. "It made sex for me such a complicated, dangerous issue that I risked myself much too much. When I was a young man it was right at the beginning of the Aids epidemic and I'd thrown myself into a very reckless sexual career which I needn't have done if I hadn't have had this institution criticising the way I was feeling. Guilt and shame in Catholicism is a terrible thing, but at the same time I am still fascinated by it." Nonetheless, he said, growing up a gay teenager at a Roman Catholic public school was "heaven".
"That was like being in the Club Med, more or less. But I didn't get interfered with by any monks. I was always dying to be."
Everett recalled his early days working at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, "The only bit of my career that really lived up to its fantasy was going to work at the Glasgow Citizens. There were rumours that everyone wore makeup and had sex in the showers and I was of course dying to get there. They did very weird plays and it was in the most dangerous ghetto in Europe, and it really did live up to everything I thought it would be. Never did I get depressed or bored. [In] everything else I have found myself whining and whingeing and complaining."
After working at the Citizens Theatre, he came to prominence in the 1984 film Another Country. Recent roles have included Oscar Wilde in Sir David Hare's play The Judas Kiss in the West End.
He admitted that he had pitched for the role of Doctor Who. "I tried to be Doctor Who but was turned down. I would have loved to have been Doctor Who but it is filmed in Cardiff and I don't think I would like to be in Cardiff," he said.
Vanished Years is Everett's second volume of memoirs, described by one critic as reading "like Brideshead Revisited rewritten by Sebastian Flyte". After the first volume, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, his erstwhile friend Madonna ceased to speak to him.
"I never got to the bottom of that, as the actress said to the bishop," said Everett. "I felt that my portrait of Madonna in my book was written in a very loving way. I admire her enormously. My feeling about characters like her is that it's such a shame that they are so protective of themselves. Quite often you read about American stars and they don't give you anything that can give you an idea of their either gorgeous or demonic character. Madonna is a dangerous, interesting fascinating person. She was very upset that I had said that she was touching Sean Penn's cock at dinner; but I think that's quite a fun thing to be doing."
