Actor confesses to real-life role as gay prostitute

British actor Rupert Everett has spoken to an American magazine about his time as a male prostitute.

The admission by the 38-year-old actor comes at a a curious moment, as he has just received rave reviews for his latest film My Best Friend's Wedding, in which he plays a gay male confidant to Julia Roberts.

One London film agent said yesterday that Everett was "extremely hot" in Hollywood at the moment, and was much in demand for future film work.

How American audiences will take to his unexpected revelations about his youth remains to be seen.

"I didn't set out to hustle," he told the American magazine Us, "but this guy offered me such a massive amount of money, well, it was like a year and a half's pocket money, and it just came in really handy."

He denied that prostitution was a rebellion against a privileged background. Everett is the Ampleforth educated son of a stockbroker. "Like a lot of upper-class people, I was given no money," he said, adding that once he "got the hang of it" he had "all sorts of clients".

In the interview Everett also scoffed at suggestions that the model and actress Elizabeth Hurley might have abandoned Hugh Grant after the Divine Brown incident. "Oh please," he said. "She's like a boomerang, darling, she's always going to come back."

Everett has long been something of an enigma in the acting profession.

After a promising stage career, he left Britain for California then Europe, bought a house in Cannes and wrote two novels Hello Darling Are You Working? and The Hairdressers of St Tropez, spoke openly about his sexuality and made a fresh start as an actor, with a self-parodying comic performance as the Prince of Wales in The Madness of King George.

There are already attempts to pair Everett and Julia Roberts for another film following the American success of their current venture. And a more bizarre report in both London and Hollywood is that Everett will soon star as a homosexual secret agent - "a gay James Bond" as it is being termed - an idea that he is said to have suggested himself. Asked about this, his agent at ICM refused to make any comment.