Prince Charming from the “Shrek” films and Julia Robert’s gay sidekick in “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is a bit of tactless bitch. Rupert Everett was chatting with the Daily Mirror when the subject Michael Jackson came up. The actor held back nothing and talked about the fact he wanted to sleep with Jackson when he was teenager (who didn’t I ask!) and said his death was “fortuitous.”

It’s 7pm in a busy Italian restaurant just off New York’s Broadway and Rupert Everett is in full gossip mode. As the pre-theatre dining crowd crane to eavesdrop, he leans in and says in a slightly too-loud stage whisper: “I would have leapt at the chance of sleeping with Michael Jackson when I was 14.”

An elderly lady blushes beetroot red, and a waiter almost drops a plate of pasta. Everett takes a sip of his red wine, blissfully unaware of the shock he has just caused… Not that Everett, whose own brief foray into the pop world included singing backing vocals on his mate Madonna’s version of American Pie, was any fan of Jackson’s.

“He was a freak,” says Everett, who at 50 is the same age Jacko was when he died. “He looked like a character from Shrek. He was a black to white minstrel. He was crucified by that court case when he was accused of child molestation – that killed him. 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. I think it was fortuitous that he died. 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 believes that Jacko’s death may even spell the end of modern-day celebrity itself. “You cannot divide the music from the person,” he says. “I think his life – and death – is a great lesson.”

Egads. I bet his rep is pouring herself a big gulp full of vodka and snacking on some pop tarts in anticipation of the shiz storm headed her way. Oh…wait…that’s my morning. Meh, generally speaking I am sure that’s how everyone rolls.

Images Via: Daily Mirror, Wenn