Hollywood has the moral compass of the Taleban or al-Qaeda, according to one of Britain’s best known film actors.

Rupert Everett, who made his name in Another Country before starring opposite Julia Roberts in the hit comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding, cited the major studios’ attitude to women, gays, abortion and addiction to support his claim.

“Hollywood is a place that pretends it’s very liberal but it’s not remotely,” he told The Times. “It’s like Al-Qaeda.”

Everett, who is gay, believes that his sexuality has cost him “tons” of leading roles during his career. In his acclaimed and frequently outspoken autobiography Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, he claims that the head of MGM once vetoed his casting as the male lead opposite Sharon Stone in a film saying “to all intents and purposes a homosexual was a pervert in the eyes of America and the world would never accept me in the role and therefore MGM would never hire me.”

His recent voicework as Prince Charming in the Shrek films is “a role I would never get in a live-action film”. He does take the lead in his new film St Trinian’s, which arrives in cinemas later this week, but he is in drag as Camilla Fritton, the irresponsible headmistress of the anarchic girls’ boarding school

Earlier this month Jodie Foster joined Everett as one of the industry’s very few out gay stars when she publicly thanked her “beautiful” partner Cydney Bernard at an awards breakfast in Los Angeles.

However, her decision should not be seen as evidence that the climate for gay actors is becoming any easier, Everett said. “It’s the opposite. She is 45 and she just couldn’t be bothered any more.

“After a certain age you can be gay (in Hollywood). Before that it’s not only not good. It’s impossible.”

Making films in America is “like being in Afghanistan” in other respects too he added. Everett has been a friend and confidante to some of the most powerful women in the entertainment industry, including Madonna, Roberts and Sharon Stone.

However, despite the rise of actresses earning $20 million a film, such as Reese Witherspoon, Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz, he believes that Hollywood is still much easier to negotiate if your are a straight, male actor.

“The treatment of women there is quite extraordinary. If you compare being a 70 year old woman to a 70 year old man, the old woman will maybe get to play a grandmother. The old man will do a film with a 20 year old girl (opposite him).

“On abortion, (the studios) are for it in private because they don’t want actresses to clog up their schedules (by taking time off to have babies). But in films, if you get pregnant you have to keep the baby and end up with the man.

Abortion has barely registered in American films since the 1980s, when it tended to happen to minor characters, in backstreet clinics and end in agony or death.

Three of the most well-reviewed American films of 2007 deal with unplanned pregnancies. But where one in five American pregnancies ends in abortion, the characters in Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno all decide to carry theirs to full term.

It is different in Europe where Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake and this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner from Romania Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days are two recent prominent films to address the topic.

Everett is equally concerned by the double standards in the entertainment industry’s treatment of addiction.

“A 50 year old male drug addict will be supported. Everyone feels enormous compassion for them. Without naming names, female alcoholics and drug addicts are absolutely rejected. It’s not accepted.

“No one suggests that Robert Downey Jr (who went to prison twice while battling drink and drug problems) was really that crazy whereas Britney Spears is almost witch hunted.”

The industry’s hypocrisy and moral conservatism is rooted in the studios’ aversion to anything that might risk damaging the bottom line, Everett said.

St Trinian’s was an exception to the rule because of its relatively small budget and because Barnaby Thompson, who produced and directed it with Oliver Parker, is also the head of Ealing Studios, the venerable institution behind it. “The studio was Barnaby more or less,” Everett said. “It wasn’t made by a board of executives.”

“Most films nowadays are made by 20-30 executives who attack the writing and change everything. You can do much less in a film now than you could in the 1970s because the stakes are so high.”

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