What led to Rupert Everett and Colin Firth's decades-long feud?

5 March 2021, 11:33 | Updated: 4 December 2023, 17:30

Rupert Everett has revealed what really happened behind the long and drawn-out feud he had with Bridget Jones' Diary star, Colin Firth, during an interview on Piers Morgan's Life Stories.

Rupert Everett is known for his no nonsense attitude and honesty when it comes to speaking in interviews, and his March 5, 2020 appearance on Piers Morgan's Life Stories, was no different.

The My Best Friend's Wedding star has opened up about what really happened between him and Colin Firth and how his 'power-crazed ego' was to blame.

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The hollywood actors have starred in a variety of films together including St Trinians, Another Country, The Happy Prince and The Importance Of Being Ernest, and Rupert admits tension between the pair started early on.

Piers Morgan starts by stating: "Your co-star in Another Country was Colin Firth, and you don't really get on."

"Not then no," Rupert replies. "No, we didn't. Well, first of all, I went to see him. He was playing my part in the play and I fell in love with him.

"Genuinely?" asks Piers.

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"Well, I just got a crush on him," Rupert admits. "I became obsessed by him and we hung out together all the time.

"And then I realised we were completely different types of people. And he always says this isn't true, but I think he was always playing guitar, singing protest songs."

Piers the quotes something Rupert said about Colin in the past: "You called him a ghastly guitar playing socialist and a grim guardian reader in sandals."

Rupert agress, saying: "Right. And so, he says he never played the guitar. So by the time, we made a film of The Importance Of Being Earnest together and then we really became very close."

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Piers Morgan wants to know more about the pair's feud, leading Rupert to admit he was "despotic and power-crazed."

"He said on the set of Another Country, you were a complete bastard," says Piers.

"Yes I was," Rupert replied honestly.

"For bullying?" Piers asks.

"Yes in a very weird way I managed to divide things and alienate him," Ruperts says. "Because I was, I was despotic and power-crazed and I decided that he was boring.

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"And that was that. And I tried to persuade everyone else that he was. And it was nasty."

Colin once talked about his own views of the feud in an interview with The Irish Times in 2004.

"We love each other now," he said firmly. "But it is plain that we didn't get on when we first worked together and I think that was my fault because I was just so boring.

"Rupert needs to be amused at all times. Earnestness doesn't go down well with him."

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"He found my politics very tedious," Colin added. "He said, I think, that I was like some 'ghastly, guitar-strumming redbrick socialist'."