Rupert Everett: ‘freakish’ Jackson ‘better off dead’

The British actor Rupert Everett has broken a Hollywood taboo and publicly criticised the late Michael Jackson, calling him a "freak" who was better off dead. The star of My Best Friend's Wedding and St Trinian's made his comments in an interview in New York this week.

"I think it was fortuitous that he died," Everett (right) told the Daily Mirror. "He was supposed to be doing 50 concerts in London. It wouldn't have mattered how good or bad he was. He wouldn't have managed to do all of them and the press would have destroyed him."
 
Everett, who voiced Prince Charming in the Shrek sequels, said that the eccentric singer looked like a character from the Dreamworks animations and described him as a "black to white minstrel".

Known for his provocative opinions, especially when he is plugging a new project – he plays Lord Byron in a new C4 series starting next Monday – Everett went on: "He personified the pain and anxiety of a black man in a slave country. We all watched as he changed from black to white. He was living performance art."
 
The 50-year-old actor also argued that the saturation coverage of Jackson's death could spell the end of modern-day celebrity. "I think his life - and death - is a great lesson... It's like the last days of Versailles," he said. "I do wonder how much more bullshit people can take about celebrities."  
 
As an afterthought, Everett, who is openly gay, told his interviewer that he had fancied the younger, pre-plastic surgery Michael Jackson. "I would have leapt at the chance of sleeping with Michael Jackson when I was 14." ·