The mad world of Rupert Everett

RUPERT EVERETT is fed up.

“I just am in despair about show business lately and the world in general,” the British actor declared, morosely picking at a fruit plate on a recent fall morning. “We’ve all turned into greedy, envious, paranoid monsters in society, really.”

Dressed indifferently in a thin plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves and blue-and-white striped cotton pants that at first glance looked like pajama bottoms, Everett on this day bore little similarity to the elegant aristocrats he’s often cast to play. But as he gave a withering critique of popular culture, delivered in his trademark clipped tone, he sounded like an extension of his on-screen persona -- self-assured, incisive and brooding; a modern-day Byronic hero, chafing against the constraints of an industry he says has lost its way.

“I’ve kind of retired,” said the famously outspoken 46-year-old actor, who says he plans to spend the next six months traveling the world, writing his memoirs. “I’m sickened by it.”

Well, he won’t be disappearing from view quite yet. After making a name for himself with scene-stealing performances in such hits as “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Shakespeare in Love,” Everett can be seen (or at least heard) in several new projects -- he had a recurring guest role on ABC’s “Boston Legal” this fall and will be the voice of the Fox in “The Chronicles of Narnia” movie due out in December. He’s also agreed to voice the Prince Charming character again in the third “Shrek” movie.

Then there’s the business of promoting his latest leading role, which he was doing this day at a midtown hotel: He’s playing Sherlock Holmes in a new “Masterpiece Theatre” movie that premieres next week. But he didn’t seem eager to act the part of the enthusiastic star. At one point, he castigated officials at the BBC, which co-produced the new Holmes mystery, as “lazy and blind and dull” for repeatedly producing classics in lieu of riskier material.

But his real preoccupation lies with larger issues. Folding his 6-foot-4 frame on an overstuffed couch, his piercing brown eyes locked in an unflinching gaze, Everett ticked off the current wrongs in the world: the fixation on celebrity and commercialism; the short-lived outcries over catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina; Hollywood’s furthering of a “wannabe society” obsessed with wealth.

“I think the movies and entertainment in general have been extremely corrosive to the structure of society ... with this culture of J. Lo and Tom Cruise, this culture of envy,” he said. “All these movie studios and television companies are so corporate and anesthetized and fearful and chasing the tails of the public, who are chasing their tails, in turn. It’s just a circle of nothing.”

A melancholy Holmes

SUCH an attitude may not endear him to those who pay his wages, but Everett’s discontent served him well in playing a moody and melancholy Holmes in this latest tale featuring the iconic 19th century sleuth, this one co-produced by Boston public television station WGBH. Written by Allan Cubitt -- whose television adaptation of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” aired in 2003 -- as a pastiche of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking” kicks off the new season of “Masterpiece Theatre” next Sunday.

After dabbling with contemporary material like Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” the venerable PBS program is returning to its roots in its 35th year by focusing on the adaptations of classic English literature for which it became known, producers said. This season includes a two-part drama about Elizabeth I and a six-part production of Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House.”

“Even in a very competitive market, when period drama is done with great care and drama and grace, it can prevail,” said Rebecca Eaton, the program’s executive producer.

Her belief in the genre has been bolstered by “Masterpiece Theatre’s” three Emmy wins this year for “The Lost Prince,” a drama about an epileptic English royal, and recent focus groups conducted by PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. According to public television viewers around the country, “Masterpiece Theatre” remains one of the most popular shows and one of the main reasons top donors contribute money to the system, said Jacoba Atlas, co-chief of PBS programming. (“Antiques Roadshow” is the perennial top-rated PBS series.)

Producers hope the research will help persuade new corporate sponsors to replace Exxon Mobil, which stopped underwriting the show last winter after more than 30 years. (PBS has financed the show since then and plans to continue until other sponsors are found.)

Still, convincing new viewers that “Masterpiece Theatre” is more than a purveyor of fusty British dramas remains a challenge. The program averaged 3.8 million viewers last season, about 12% higher than PBS’ average prime-time ratings but a drop-off of 18% from the year before.

“What we often find is because ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ has been on the landscape for so long and people have drifted away from loyalty to any network, they might assume it is going to take too much of a commitment, it’s going to be too hard to watch,” Eaton said. “But what we find is when people watch, they say, ‘I like this, there’s nothing old-fashioned about this.’ ”

Thoughts of escape

THE hope, then, is that Everett, with his highbrow credentials and contemporary cachet, could attract a new generation of viewers. The actor brought his own imprint to the Holmes movie, seeking to flesh out the characters’ psychology and explore class issues that underlie the story. The film, set in Edwardian London, revolves around a series of murders of wealthy young women, all found with silk stockings stuffed in their mouths.

Everett’s Holmes is detached, languid and sardonic -- and quite through with the detective business, at least initially. When we first glimpse him, the retired sleuth is ensconced in a dark, smoky opium den, his eyes glassy as he inhales the narcotic. Everett, who has admitted to heroin use in his youth, plays the detective’s addiction as an attempt to escape from the darkness he’s witnessed. When Dr. Watson tracks him down to plead for his help with the case, Holmes feigns indifference but eventually can’t resist the puzzle. As he searches for clues in fog-enshrouded London, he swings between cool assessments and manic bursts of energy.

Everett is openly gay and known for his campy performances, but in this movie he portrays Holmes as strictly asexual: “I think my Sherlock Holmes is a watcher. As soon as you’re partaking and you’re in a sexual and emotional relationship with someone, you’re a different type of person.”

The movie aired in England last December to solid reviews, although not all Sherlockians -- who zealously monitor each interpretation of Conan Doyle’s creation -- were delighted with Everett’s performance.

“I think he plays him in a slightly arch way,” said Nick Uchetin, editor of the Sherlock Holmes Journal, a publication of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. “He tries too hard. There’s a little bit of nostril-flaring and high-pitched stuff.”

Cubitt, who wrote the screenplay, said the actor lobbied aggressively to incorporate his vision of the detective into the production. He agreed with many but not all of Everett’s ideas.

” “I think he possibly wanted to push this idea of a second sight quality further than I think is right for Holmes,” he said. “Holmes is above all a calculating character.... But Rupert has a romantic dimension to him, and I think he’s quite keen to play that.”

For Everett, who grew animated discussing the complexity of the character, the key to Holmes is his duality.

“He’s two totally opposite things: He’s a crime fighter, but at the same time, he’s a criminal, he’s a drug addict,” he said. “And I think that’s probably why he’s had this durability, in a sense, because he represents the time perfectly, this split down the middle in Victorian society that we have now: this highly moralistic, finger-pointing judgmental society, but inside it is this sheer decadence.”

The idea of taking on a role that has been played so famously by so many actors -- including Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Nicol Williamson and Michael Caine -- also intrigued him, although Everett said he didn’t review the earlier portrayals for inspiration. Rather, he pondered the makeup of Holmes’ nature, trying to unearth the secret to the detective’s brilliance.

“I think he’s got a kind of Vedic quality to his life, as opposed to a Judeo-Christian quality, in that he looks as if he’s in a permanently meditative state,” he said. “He goes into a crime scene and he doesn’t judge. I thought how great for Sherlock Holmes to be a sort of Buddhist, a kind of Zen approach.”

Everett said he had to “push and push and push to get as far as I did with any kind of reinvention on this one, and it really wasn’t that substantial.” As much as he enjoyed the character, the experience confirmed his frustrations with British television and its reliance on traditional classics.

“I constantly suggest new things to the BBC and they all go, ‘No, but do you want to do Sherlock Holmes again?’ ” he said. “And I think the people, in their turn, are kind of so blobby in one sense, they say, ‘Oh, Sherlock Holmes at Christmas, OK.’ ”

Time out for autobiography

WHICH once again brings up the whole issue of the state of the entertainment industry, which Everett largely blames for public complacency. Recalling the resonance of movies like “On the Waterfront,” which shone a light on labor union corruption, he said the industry must “move back into the business of being the mirror of how society is and not this wannabe society.”

“We’re adding fuel to the fire in a terrible way,” Everett added darkly. “I think the ‘MTV Cribs’ generation is very, very divisive to the culture.”

But isn’t anybody in Hollywood tackling challenging social issues? What about George Clooney, who wrote and directed a movie about the McCarthy era?

“Yet at the same time, he’s still destroying the culture with ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ and ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ mindless films of greed,” he retorted. “Does he need more money? Do any of those people need to do such a mindless film to create another empty space in popular culture?”

So Everett said he’s through with the business -- at least for now. He’s traveling to Brazil and India in the coming months, where he will work on his autobiography, slated for next October.

“It’s a romantic story,” said the actor, who was schooled at an English boarding school and got kicked out of London’s Central School for Speech and Drama as a young thespian. “It’s not full of hideous, terrifying, smutty revelations.”

He plans to do a play next year and may work on small independent features that offer the chance of more control. But he said he has no immediate plans to do another major film -- unless a great part came along.

“But there’s very little that’s really, really good, and that stuff is swallowed up by people who are much more successful,” he said glumly.

“If you’re going to compete in this business, it’s so competitive, so you can’t have any reservations. You have to give yourself 100% to this job.... To do what --’Mission Impossible 5’? Get the role of the villain? I don’t think so.”

A few days later, Everett asks to meet for coffee and clarify a few things. He’s not really retiring, he says, but rather just taking a sabbatical and pondering how to work in the industry without compromising himself.

“I don’t want to just sound negative,” he said. “I just really want to recommit myself at this stage if I’m going to work, to doing something that is worthwhile.”

Of course, Everett added, the gloom seeping back in, that “is not really having a career, because you can’t really operate like that in this world.”

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‘Masterpiece Theatre’ through the years

In 1969, “The Forsyte Saga” -- a 26-part BBC adaptation of John Galsworthy’s epic about an upper-middle-class Victorian family -- first aired on American public television. Its popularity persuaded broadcasters that the U.S. had an appetite for British dramas and inspired the creation two years later of “Masterpiece Theatre.” The program aired a new eight-hour version of “The Forsyte Saga” in 2002 and a second series about the family in 2004. While some critics and fans say the show suffered a creative slump at times during its 34-year run, most recently its programming has drawn acclaim, including three Emmys for last year’s “The Lost Prince.” Other notable productions include:

“Upstairs, Downstairs”: The story of the Bellamys, a fashionable Edwardian family, and their domestic staff, was so popular that the 1973 series was extended for four seasons.

“I, Claudius”: The mid-1970s Roman epic, starring Derek Jacobi, offered one of the first glimpses of nudity on broadcast television and set the bar for many sword-and-sandal sagas that followed.

“Middlemarch”: The lavish 1994 miniseries based on George Eliot’s 19th century novel drew critical acclaim.

“Prime Suspect”: The contemporary detective series, starring Helen Mirren as British inspector Jane Tennison, has had six episodes; some aired on “Mystery.”