Rupert James Hector Everett was born on 29 May 1959, to wealthy parents. His father was in the British Army, Major Anthony Michael Everett. His maternal grandfather, Vice Admiral Sir Hector Charles Donald MacLean DSO, was a nephew of Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, Hector Lachlan Stewart MacLean. His maternal grandmother, Opre Vyvyan, was a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German (Baron) von Schmiedern. Everett is of English, Irish, Scottish, and more distant German and Dutch ancestry. He was raised a Roman Catholic.
From age seven, Everett was educated at Farleigh School in Andover, Hampshire, and later educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire. When he was 16, his parents agreed that he could leave school and move to London to train as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. In an interview with Us magazine in 1997, he said that he supported himself during this period by doing sex work for drugs and money.
