Being Madonna's 'ami necessaire', fancying Colin Firth and liking Alastair Campbell: Rupert Everett on his desert island pictures By RUPERT EVERETT

Lip service, 1981: I’d gatecrashed this party. Andy Warhol was under a weird peroxide wig, and Bianca Jagger was sleek and glowing. Andy took Bianca’s lipstick and wrote on my forehead, ‘I love you’. A photographer took this shot. The following Monday I was in the Daily Mail beneath the headline ‘spotlight on Bianca’s new leading man’. My first brush with publicity left me with a sense of panic

The farce be with me, 2009: Dreams do come true! Angela Lansbury, Julie Andrews and me backstage at the Shubert Theatre – I performed with Angela for six months in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit

Ma, Pa and me, 1959: My mother met my father in Malta, where he was stationed after the war. It was a fairytale backdrop to a military Romeo And Juliet. My father was rigidly conventional, ambitious, suave and without any semblance of a ‘connection’ that might inspire Granny and Grandpa to part with their eldest child. However, my mother was headstrong and pretty

The odd couple, 2000: On the set of The Next Best Thing, with Madonna. The film tore my career to shreds, but for a few short months – when it was made but not seen – I was her ‘ami necessaire’. The world was fascinated by us and so were we

Firth among equals, 1984: With Colin Firth on the set of Another Country. Colin had been cast in the role Kenneth Branagh played on stage. At first I quite fancied him, until he produced a guitar and began to sing protest songs between scenes. It took us 20 years to become friends

Fired? No, I quit! 2006: Sitting at a table for Celebrity Apprentice with Ross Kemp, Danny Baker, Alastair Campbell and Piers Morgan. I knew I could not spend four days with these people. I was sitting with the man who’d sexed up the dossier that took us to war in Iraq. Actually he was rather a nice person...

Blow up, 1979: This is at the 21st birthday of Isabella Blow (centre). She was so vivid and the intensity that would later turn to madness sparkled at this point (Blow killed herself in 2007). She was hypnotic, and I adored her, even if I was a bit jealous

Rupert Everett picture byline: Photos 12 / Alamy