In an interview with the Sunday Times, the gay actor Rupert Everett has said that he was a slut because he was furious with his Catholic faith.

The actor who has spoken at length before about his sex life told the newspaper: “I was a slut. I loved sex.”

Asked if he just loved sex or was furious with Catholicism he replied. “Both. You were told [at school] that if you got a hard-on, you should turn over and say a Hail Mary. You somehow make it work for yourself, but it gives you lots of bubbles inside. I wanted to tear everything down, and the way I found to do it was sex.”

“They didn’t necessarily have to be attractive. It depends how the lights are hitting you and how the drinks are hitting you.”

“My whole life was about sex, really, in one sense or another.”

The actor claimed that society turned against gay people in the 1980s: “People were really turning against gays — they had been so popular in the 1970s. Being black was rather popular in the 1970s, too.”

The actor also discussed his friendship with the legendary actor and gay rights campaigner Sir Ian McKellen. Asked by the interviewer to comment on a line in his autobiography Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, he told a friend: “I am shagging Ian McKellen, I swear!” “No,” he said “I was friends with Ian McKellen.” Questioned why it’s in his book he replied: “I did sleep with Ian McKellen, I loved stalking people. Now it’s illegal, such a shame. Such fun.”

Yesterday, Everett appeared on the Andrew Marr show and said that Oscar Wilde “fills me with the same compassion that Jesus fills other people with.”

Last year, Everett said: “Why do queens want to go and get married in churches? Obviously this crusty old pathetic, Anglican Church – the most joke-ish church of all jokey churches – of course they don’t want to have queens getting married. It’s kind of understandable that they don’t; they’re crusty old calcified freaks.

“But why do we want to get married in churches? I don’t understand that, myself, personally. I loathe heterosexual weddings; I would never go to a wedding in my life. I loathe the flowers, I loathe the fucking wedding dress, the little bridal tiara. It’s grotesque. It’s just hideous.”

Last year he also said: “I can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.”

In a 2009 interview he advised gay actors to keep their sexual orientation secret if they want to succeed.