Rupert Everett has said that The Next Best Thing, a film he starred in alongside Madonna, was "a car crash" that "completely finished things" for him in Hollywood.
The actor, known for films including My Best Friend's Wedding, St Trinian's, and Another Country, played Robert Whittaker in the Noughties movie about two best friends, a straight woman and a gay man, who decide to raise a child together.
Speaking to Elizabeth Day on her podcast How to Fail, Everett said: "That was a car crash because the sad thing about The Next Best Thing was that it really was my movie.
"It came to me after My Best Friend's Wedding.
"I was very popular in Hollywood for that year, it was made by Paramount.
"The movie was green-lit because I was going to be in it. I managed to persuade Sherry Lansing, the head of Paramount, and the producers that I could rewrite the movie, which I did with my writing partner of the time.
"I also hired John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man) to be the director which was, I think in hindsight, well, it was a mistake because then he wanted me to stay with him and help him prepare the movie.
"And I went off and did another job. So that was an example of me not really following the ball exactly because possibly I could have stayed with him during the pre-production and structured the film, as I thought it should have been, but it rapidly flew out of control.
"And at a certain point I remember I was fired as the writer, fired as the producer, and the producer said to me, 'If you want to stay as the actor you can, but don't if you don't want to'.
"I should have probably walked away from it at that point and I didn't.
"It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days, Madonna sold a lot of videos, but the film itself didn't work."
He added: "Everything went wrong, really, in the making of it, and it completely finished things for me in Hollywood."
Everett is also known for voicing Prince Charming in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third and more recently starred in the TV series Everybody Loves Diamonds and The Serpent Queen.
How to Fail with Elizabeth Day is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Source: Press Association
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