Luke Evans - ‘If I didn’t have to take my top off on a movie set, I’d let myself go’

Lovely, lovely, LOVELY Luke Evans. I think he’s quite possibly one of the nicest men in Hollywood - a bona fide A-Lister after star turns in Beauty and the Beast, The Hobbit, Fast & Furious, to name but a few. And yet, his early life was challenging. Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, he was unable to be open about his sexuality for fear of banishment from the church and rejection by his parents. He left home at 16, moved to Cardiff to study singing, and eventually became a successful musical theatre actor before finally landing a movie role at the age of 30, which would change his life forever. He hasn’t stopped working since. Luke and I talked about being gay in Hollywood, his physical insecurities (despite being the embodiment of a certain kind of masculine perfection on-screen) and how his early days of knocking on doors with his Jehovah’s Witness parents prepared him for rejection in his career. His failures? To find a soulmate until his 40s, accepting success and a failure to learn what his dad knows. I also get to study his tattoo and ask him who his favourite Hollywood co-star is and why… NEW HOW TO FAIL WITH ELIZABETH DAY PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR DATE Friday 28th March 2025 – The London Barbican Go to: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Studio and Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Sole and John Scott Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

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• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first...

• 1:08Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that firmly believes learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. Before we get to our esteemed guest, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing with Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Luke Evans to give you a flavour of what I mean.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  You're talking to like a romantic here. Serial monogamist, loves sharing life with somebody. I'm the worst.

• 1:42Elizabeth Day?

  If you want to send me one of your failures for my guest and me to give advice on, follow the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions. Thank you so, so much.

• 1:59Elizabeth Day?

  My guest today modestly describes himself as a South Wales Valley boy done good. It's a characteristic humility that has its roots in Luke Evans's upbringing. Raised as a Jehovah's Witness, he spent his weekends knocking on doors to warn neighbours of the impending Armageddon. He knew he was gay, but being open about his sexuality would mean banishment from the church and heap shame on his parents. It was an internal conflict that led to him leaving home at 16 and moving to Cardiff to study singing. At 17, he won a scholarship to the performing arts college, the London Studio Centre. After

• 2:40Elizabeth Day?

  graduating, he starred in many West End productions, including Taboo, Miss Saigon and Avenue Q. Age 30, he made the move into films, landing roles in a slew of Hollywood blockbusters, including Clash of the Titans, The Hobbit trilogy, the Fast and the Furious franchise, and Beauty and the Beast. He's also released two cover albums, the latest of which reached the top five in the UK charts. But, as Evans recounts in his newly published memoir, Boy from the Valleys, it has been a long journey to success and self-acceptance. He writes, "I wonder if I could have had the chance to tell my younger self these words,

• 3:23Elizabeth Day?

  whether it would have helped him. Unbelievably, he did it all anyway, without my help." Luke Evans, welcome to How to Fail.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Thank you. How are you?

• 3:35Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so good. It is such a joy to have you here.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I'm excited to be here.

• 3:40Elizabeth Day?

  We've been trying for a while, and we will get on to our particular story, I'm sure, as part of this podcast. But first of all, I want to congratulate you on your extraordinary memoir, which had me riveted and moved, page by page. And I wonder if we could start there with that young Luke Evans, the one that you hope your words might have saved. What was Luke like when he was 12?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Oh, he was a handful. He definitely had an opinion on everything. There was the Luke at school who was a mouse and hid in the shadows and tried to avoid the bullies and never spoke up. And but at home, it was a very warm environment, a loving family. I was flourishing and had a very loving family. And I loved singing. We were a very sociable family. We had lots of friends. And twelve would have been the first year I'd been in secondary school, which not to be a Debbie Downer, but you know, the secondary school was quite miserable. And so that first year was probably the worst because I'd come from a little junior

• 4:53Speaker 01

  school that was opposite my house to the big school, which was a mile away. Yeah, it wasn't pleasant. But I don't know how I was able to do that at twelve. But when I got home, I could just pretend I was somebody else.

• 5:07Elizabeth Day?

  There's a bit of it that I can relate to. I also had a really unhappy secondary school experience when I was at school in Belfast with this English accent. And then going home, I felt that I was a slightly different person. It's like I was performing in both in both elements, performing in the sense of pretending everything was okay at home, and then performing at school so as not to let the bullies get to me.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Sounds exactly the same as me.

• 5:30Elizabeth Day?

  And you were bullied both for being a Jehovah's Witness and for your sexuality almost before you'd said it to yourself.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Kids can be brutal, you know, and they it just is a thing. And I, you know, I listened to my god kids talking and, you know, I don't think much has changed. They say they target the same things in boys and girls. And I guess I was probably, I mean, I was an only child, very pacifist parents, not aggressive at all. You know, you'd walk away from a fight. You don't swear. You don't do anything bad. You try and be a good member of society. And I just wasn't ready for the bullies. And so I was like the perfect target. All my friends were girls because all the Jehovah's Witnesses in the secondary school were girls, apart from me and this one other boy. And I was the one that had to speak up. And we were told really to stick with each other. It was the obvious, you know,

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Words to use against me. I didn't know that I was gay at six, seven, but I knew I was maybe different, but no concept as to what that meant. So when I was called these horrible names, you know, they'd put Jovi and Bender in the same, they'd target me with this two names, you know, not one or the other. It was Jovi Bender. One was attacking my religion that I was a part of, and the other one was attacking something I didn't know that I, you know, was the slang for being gay. And I didn't know what that was, but I also knew that as the years went by, those early years, formative years, I knew that what I was feeling and who I was, was dead against what the religion believed. And, and I knew what would happen to people like who I knew I was turning into.

• 7:04Elizabeth Day?

  As someone who was bullied at a formative age, one of the things that you say in your book, which I found very self-aware and very moving, is that you were left feeling physically incompetent.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:17Elizabeth Day?

  And it's so interesting that now you sit before me, Luke Evans, Hollywood movie star, to so many people, the embodiment of an ideal masculine physique.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:31Elizabeth Day?

  How much do you think those two things are related?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Staying fit and in a certain physical fitness level now is definitely to do with my job. I mean, I'm sure if I didn't have to go and take my top off on a movie set every now and again, I'd probably let it all go. I wouldn't care so much, but it is part of my job. I get cast in certain roles that require a certain amount of physical, you know, strength and aesthetic. It's been good because it's probably kept me on the straight and narrow. But as a kid, I just immediately was questioning what it is they were bullying me specifically. Why me? Why not the other boys in the room? Why not anyone else? Just why is it me? And it's a terrible thing for a kid to have to think what's wrong with me. There was nothing

• 8:17Speaker 01

  wrong with me. There was nothing wrong at all. Nobody was telling me that. And so I started to critique my own physicality, you know, my big ears, my voice, maybe it was a bit high, maybe a gesture was a giveaway, maybe, uh, maybe the clothes I was wearing, maybe the, uh, it was, it was relentless self-analysis, which a kid shouldn't go through that. You shouldn't have to think about what's wrong with you. It's a terrible thing. But that is definitely something that went on. But it's quite ironic that, you know, now, you know, people see this version, you know, but um, it's not the, the, the person, the little kid is a very different human being.

• 9:01Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, and I wonder how you feel inside, although you present externally in a certain way.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Inside, I still sometimes go to the gym and, and just feel very anxious, look at myself in the mirror, um, and just go, God, you know, you, you don't look good enough, or, you know, you, you, you're letting it go, or, yeah, look at my face. The terrible part about my industry is that, you know, you're just reminded constantly of the decades of film you've done, when you had not a crease on the face and not a gray, not one gray stubble, whereas all my stubble is now gray. And, uh, it just, so many things I keep being reminded of. So I've had to learn to be kinder to myself. But I have terrible anxiety about

• 9:49Speaker 01

  feeling good enough physically, just everything. Part of that isn't completely bad. I think it's, gives you a little something to fight for, but it can be overwhelming, you know? Like, I've been on a beach just recently and I just, I didn't want to take my t-shirt off. I, I know I'm, I don't want to be in that place. I, I know I'm, I shouldn't feel like that. But, you know, we, we are, you know, sensitive creatures. We're very delicate. As hard as I may look, I'm quite delicate.

• 10:17Elizabeth Day?

  I think that's a really beautiful and generous thing for you to share because I know it will resonate with so many people.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, men, we're always told, you know, like, you know, just be strong. And I always admire, like, I walk down the street or we're in a bar or in the gym and look at some guy and he's like, super confident. And I'm just like, wow. And it just seems effortless when I do it. It's a whole lot of work when I have to present that. I'm not massively confident about lots of things about me, but I I've learnt to to deal with it, not ignore it and understand why and process it. But it doesn't go away. There's a little boy inside of me. We all carry our little kids, you know, our little people. They're with us all through our life. And the one I carry

• 11:05Speaker 01

  was bullied and didn't like who he was and was always questioned. And I have that with me now, but I can, as an adult, I understand it more. And so it doesn't consume me. It doesn't stop me from doing stuff. I did finally take my T shirt off on the beach, but it took me about three, three Long Island iced teas and a bit of confidence. And then I took my top off. I don't think I'm on my own here. I think it's common. I think it's important for people to, you know, know that I outwardly present this strong character. But, you know, I suffer with insecurities and lack of confidence and self-worth and, you know, all those things all the time.

• 11:46Elizabeth Day?

  Although I want it to change for you, for you to feel better, I think that it's the thing that probably gives you this grace that is so obvious whenever you meet Luke Evans, Hollywood superstar. I wanted to ask you just one more thing about younger Luke, which was about being a Jehovah's Witness and how, it's a strange question. And it sounds a bit trivializing, and I don't intend it to be. But I wonder how much of it you felt was preparation now, looking back for what you do now, in terms of knocking on doors and being rejected. Did that help you with auditions?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:25Elizabeth Day?

  In terms of the performance.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Well, it must have. I mean, it must have, you know, we've put ourselves in positions, I'm talking about Jehovah's Witnesses, me, my mum and dad, every week of our lives, we would knock on. Twenty doors, maybe nineteen of them would probably be rejected or not even opened. And you knew they were inside or slammed in our faces. One may listen to the introduction of what we had to say, but it was very rare. And that was something I was aware of from literally a toddler. And I'd look up at my mum and dad and I remember just the door would shut and my mum would go, oh, well, next door. And I guess I observed that and I don't, I'm fine with rejection.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It doesn't bother me at all, even um certain relationships I've had, you know, where people, they, you know, they lick their wounds for years and they can't move on and stuff. I give myself the moment to process it and then move on because I think whether we like it or not, you could be the most successful human being on the planet. You'll still be rejected somewhere along the line by someone or something. And I think you have to realize it's part of our human journey to, to, to be, to have a door slammed in your face, to feel rejected, to not get what you want, to be told no. This is life and I've realized, I think as an adult, looking back in retrospect, that, you know,

• 13:54Speaker 01

  that must have had some positive effect on me. I mean, my career, you know, people talk about the fact that I was this huge star on the West End. I was not, it was terrible, it wasn't good, it was fine and I was ready to give it up. It wasn't constant, I couldn't afford to keep supplementing it. But you know, there was times I got for a job and I thought this is going to be mine and didn't get it. You know, it was constant, that was how musical theatre is, you know, you just audition, audition, audition and hope for the one job that you can pay your bills. I never dwelled on it, I just don't think it's healthy. Give it a minute and then move on.

• 14:28Elizabeth Day?

  Great advice. Let's get on to your failures. So your first failure is your failure to find your soulmate until you were in your forties.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And firstly, I need to just say before we talk about that is that I'm not saying all the relationships before the person I've met, who is my soulmate, were a complete desert. Some of them were absolute car crashes, and I think we can all relate to that. And they don't need speaking about, but there are some that I learnt things from. But as the relationship unfolded, we weren't compatible. It just, it just realised that we, it wasn't going to work. And, you know, either painfully or graciously, they came to a conclusion and we finished. Some of those people are still in my life and some of them are very, very close to me. And one of them is my best friend from 20 years ago. We did, we were partners for three years. We own a house together. I mean, it's really odd, but anyway, we are friends.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  But it's a little sad, I feel like, getting to 40. I sometimes think, oh, wouldn't it have been great to have gone through the whole journey with someone? But this is me being idealistic and, you know, of course, that's not how it is. And maybe what I've learnt from these relationships and being alone and all those things. And I've learnt so much that I can bring so much more to a relationship now. I'm a very different person from 10 years ago, really different, which is weird. I can see that now. I value this relationship so much and I value this person so much. Fran, let's give him his name. We've been together almost four years and it literally has gone like that.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  It felt like we met yesterday. It's, it's just seamlessly, just gradually growing and morphing into something bigger and stronger and happy. It's always happy, it's positive, it's easy, which I say, I don't say that flippantly. Easy is not a, it's a hard thing to find in a relationship. I don't think I've ever had an easy relationship, but I have it now. And as much as it's sad that we didn't meet earlier on, I'm so grateful that in my 40s, I have met this person that just completely.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  It just top and tails my life. I feel like it's, it's, it's my travelling partner, my business partner. We giggle together. We go to the gym together. We're also fine apart. We've just spent a month apart. You know, we're good. We're really good. There's a strength. There's, there's a confidence I have because of him. It's just lovely.

• 17:11Elizabeth Day?

  I wanted to ask you about your journey with your sexuality. Because of the way that you grew up and the internal shame that you felt at the idea that you would have to tell your parents and they would be told by church elders never to speak to you again. That is a crushing weight for a young boy to live with.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:37Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think that informed, I mean, it sort of delayed your progression into relationships?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  I mean, it delayed me coming out. I couldn't. I just had to keep it secret. I had no one to tell. I had no non-Jehovah's Witness friends. So I kept it to myself the whole, my whole childhood. It was only when I left home, and I didn't leave home because I wanted to. I left home because I needed to, because I couldn't lie to them anymore. And I had to find my, I had to be who I knew I was. And I couldn't do that under my mum and dad's roof. Out of respect for them and their religion, but also out of respect for myself, I knew that I had to find a new life. And I knew it was just on a 45 minute

• 18:29Speaker 01

  train journey to another city, I'd find new people. But at 16, that is a very young age to have to make that decision to go alone, to do it alone. I had no brothers and sisters. No one knew. And I thought that was the best way. I'll just start again. And that's what I did. I'd had that planned from the age of 12, because I knew that legally I could leave home at 16. And so I just went, well, you've just got to suck it up for the next four years and get through it and then leave. And I did exactly what I planned. When I talk to my friends and they says, when did, what time, when did you leave home? And I say 16, they're like, 16? It's like children, like a child, you know? And I guess

• 19:14Speaker 01

  I was, but I.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I just knew that I couldn't carry on there being with these feelings and knowing that it wasn't going to change, you know, this person, I'm, I'm not going to change. And, um, and I knew very little other than that.

• 19:33Elizabeth Day?

  What comes across so strongly is how much you love your parents.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I mean, they're just, they're amazing people. And I, it's so, and I'm so glad that I feel like this. I know a lot of people who have been in my position or similar, very angry, and it's totally understandable. And I see that, you know, you know, to be put through this is wrong. You know, religion shouldn't force you to have to make a decision between being your true self and losing your family and everyone around you. But I'm okay with it because I love my mom and dad. My upbringing was joyous. They are great human beings, very patient. I was a bastard as a kid. I was a nightmare, like a teenager, imagine. I was in the closet, not was in the closet, I was screaming every night because I couldn't tell anyone.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  I was going through the hormonal changes of pubescent teenager. I didn't want to be in the religion. I hated knocking doors. I, everything about my life was wrong and I was just miserable. I was so miserable with my mom and dad and they were so patient. They were so young, they dealt with it all. Their only child leaves home at 16. And did they, they didn't turn their back on me. Of course, they didn't know at that point, but I was moving away from the religion. And even that meant that I was possibly going to die at Armageddon. I hadn't put the icing on the cherry on the icing of the cake by that point, but you know, it was a big thing for them to lose me, you know. I didn't go to the Kingdom Hall, I didn't knock doors, I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to start my new life.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And they've just been so kind and accepting, even though they have their religion.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  We have managed to find a balance where we both can respect each other and our choices and our lives and our journeys. They're different, but they can work parallel with each other.

• 21:21Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, it is an amazing achievement that really for all three of you. There's an incident in the book where your parents discover a stash of gay literature and porn that you'd hidden in the lining of an armchair in your bedroom.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Just like this, like there's a chair.

• 21:38Elizabeth Day?

  Well, what you don't know, Luke, is that before you arrived today, we stuffed it full. But tell us that story.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had, my mum would go to Cardiff often on the weekend and so I'd go on the train with her and she'd love shopping. I hate shopping, always have. And so I'd drop her off at Howells's, which is the department store, or Debenhams, or Primark, or whatever. And I'd just go wandering and I'd look around the bookshops and I'd found, I found this one little bookshop in this little arcade in Cardiff and it was called Chapter and Verse. And I'd never just found it, I'd never seen it before. So I walked in and I said hello to the shopkeeper and then I started looking around the books. And in one corner was the LGBT section. And I didn't really realise straight away, but as I pulled a book down,

• 22:31Speaker 01

  I realised it was Maurice, the famous gay novel, and then a book about safe sex and then a book about, oh, so many different books. I mean, and it was like, I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking he was going to come and tell me off. But of course, it's gay literature. He was, I think he was a gay guy himself. That was the moment I had an outlet where I could learn just about that I wasn't on my own. There was even a romantic novel about gay, gay men. So I started to build up every week. I'd come to Cardiff with my mum, she'd go to Debenhams and I'd go and spend my pocket money that I'd saved or that from my little jobs I used to have in the valleys.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  And I'd buy books and and and I'd just built up a collection of different things. Uh, different books. Some of them were photographic, uh, Tom Bianchi and Tom of Finland. No, lots of different books. And I used to hide it in a quick save carrier bag in the lining of a chair that was my old mom and my old sofa that my mom and dad had. They'd bought a new one and I took the armchair. And I was the only one that knew it was there. And one day I went to look for it and it had gone. And uh, my whole life flashed before my eyes in that very moment. I put the cushion back on the chair and I sat on it. My whole body was shaking because this was the moment I was dreading.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I was like, you're so stupid. You shouldn't have put it there. Cause I knew the only two people that would have looked was my mom and dad. And so I had to confront my mom and dad about it. I packed a case upstairs, thirteen years old, fourteen years old. Um, thinking that after the conversation I will have to have, that they will tell me to leave. Because that's what I would have been brought up to know. I knew other families in our area, our district where their son had been thrown out. And they'd never spoken to him again. But I was ready. I was like, okay, I clearly had processed what ifs before this moment. And I knew that this is what would happen. So I went and confronted my mom and dad about it.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  And uh, they'd found it months before and they hadn't told me, which made me feel even worse. And I said, where is it? And she finally said, well, your father took it into the garden, lit a bonfire and burnt it page by page. And we don't want to talk about it again, which is a very common thing for parents, often maybe not so much nowadays, but you know, if you don't talk about it, it may go away. Um, also for us to talk about it, there was this huge thing that would happen if we accepted it, acknowledged it, it would mean some serious shit would go down and none of us wanted that. Although I was thought that was the end.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  I thought I would be on a train to Cardiff, sleeping on a park bench, literally. That's what I thought. But it didn't happen. Um. We didn't talk about it for many years later and made it even more frustrating. I probably got even more angry at that point, you know.

• 25:31Elizabeth Day?

  It's a lot of internal tension for a young man to deal with. As you mentioned, you do go to Cardiff. You start being coached in singing by a fantastic singing coach, Louise. You met Charlotte Church on her doorstep. You became very good friends with Charlotte Church. You got into a relationship with an older man who was your boss in a, was it a call centre?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Elizabeth Day?

  Who was very nice to you, but you were saying to your parents, oh, he's a friend and a nice landlord. And then at some stage, it does get to a point where you get very, very low and you have to tell your mum about your true self.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:10Elizabeth Day?

  And I want to preface this by asking how you feel about the terminology around coming out, whether you think that that's an accurate phrase or whether, because I know some people find it borderline offensive to imply that there's anything they need to come out about.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm not offended by it. I mean, it's, it's, but it's sad that, you know, gay people have to do that. And it usually comes with massive anxiety, upset, hears the thought of losing people, not being accepted, being rejected. I would rather have not to have had to have done it for sure.

• 26:44Elizabeth Day?

  And how old were you when you told your mum?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I was nineteen.

• 26:48Elizabeth Day?

  She reacted in a way that seems typical of her, which was very loving.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Hmm. She had to force it out of me, but she knew I was upset and she didn't know why. And I, I just said, well, remember by this point I'd been living a happy life, gay life in London for three years. So I was coming home with some kind of strength of identity, but in a very broken way, because I was, I'd just broken up from my first relationship and I had nowhere to go. I'd moved out and, you know. So I said, if I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you everything. I'm not going to hold back. And a lot of it, you're probably not going to like to hear. And she said, well, I'm your mother. You need to tell me because it's upsetting to see you like this. So I just let it roll. Two, three hours, we went for a walk. We sat on the swings in the park at the bottom of the street.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Oof, the sun went down. We processed as much as she could process and, um.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  And then we went back to the house and she said, let's not tell dad yet. I think I need to process this first. She's so clever. She knew exactly how to manage the situation and she did. I wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, really, you know, no one knew me as a Jehovah's Witness. But, you know, it's a big thing. It was a lot for her to deal with, but, you know, she managed it.

• 28:11Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 28:57Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 50 minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 29:13Elizabeth Day?

  We've lived through a really, really interesting and seismic shift in terms of how we view sexual identity.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 29:22Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, it's been an incredible thing.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:26Elizabeth Day?

  And part of that has been Hollywood's changing attitude that arguably hasn't changed quickly enough towards having, again, I don't like this phrase, but openly gay leading men in a variety of roles. And you really have been a trailblazer for that. But it came, I imagine, at a cost. There was a sort of dance that you had to play for a while. Is that right?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yes, without realising it. I mean, I hadn't thought about it when all this started. I, you know, because everybody knew I was gay. It was like, well, no, no big deal. And then all of a sudden, it was like first day at school again, you know, and, and, and, and it was an international platform where people who'd never heard of me, all of a sudden I'm in these big tent pole studio films, playing these masculine presenting leading men. And they put two and two together and came up with the wrong number. You know, they, I mean, it's what people, the people assume they, you know, it's just, it just happened. And all of a sudden I had to announce it again and go through the whole thing. But this time what I was, I wasn't going to lose my mum and dad.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  But this time there was another thing I could lose because there was no one in front of me that had done it. Where I can go, well, they were okay. There was none of my age, playing my characters that I was doing at that point. I couldn't refer to another actor that had done it. Of course, they were gay actors. They were much older, Ian McKellen, for example. But I was, you know, just started getting this success and I thought it's going to be taken away from me. It's going to be pulled from underneath me because they're not going to accept this. The audiences, the studios, it's too much of a risk. What if the audiences doesn't done? They know how they're going to believe him in a straight relationship on screen. And I could see it all just about to just fall between my fingers.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  And I was like, it just never ends. I was like, I, and I thought, well, I can't do anything about it. I'm not going to deny it. I don't want to deny it. It was painful for me because the first couple of interviews or, or, or stuff I did, you know, um, a first premiere I did. I took my best friend Holly. She's like the most glamorous person I knew. I know. She's always dressed up to the nines and I've known her for years. So I said, should we do the red carpet? Come down the red carpet. She's all dolled up. And the Daily Mail did an article saying like, this is his girlfriend, but you know, he actually. And it was all, it was just sensational press and, and unfortunately he was taken verbatim. And it caused some really horrible backlash, especially from the gay community.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Not all of them, of course, because most of them knew me. So they knew that I, that, you know, that wasn't true. But, uh, it had, and it was, it was a moment where I was like, wow, all that I'd been through up until this point. And I'd lived a happy life. Um. People think that I'm hiding and I've got um what they call a beard, you know, my friend Holly, but no, it's like, it was just, I knew she'd wanna do the red carpet. Uh, yeah, so it was a funny old place to be in that point and the thought of losing this new business, this new career, the one that was changing my life before my very eyes, was gonna be taken away from me. But, you know, I, it wasn't in my hands, it was

• 32:39Speaker 01

  out of my control and I just had to go along with it and be authentic and be real and tell it the way I wanted to tell it, which is what I did.

• 32:49Elizabeth Day?

  And keep working hard. You're one of the hardest working people in, in showbiz. And that brings us on to your second failure, which is such an interesting one. And I imagine it's connected to everything we've been discussing, your failure to accept your success. How does that manifest itself?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Well, uh, most of, most of the time internally, I've managed to deal with this feeling internally. I've never felt um, uh, that I deserve the success I have. I think there's way more talented people out there. I, even this last job, you know, I, I will spend so much time going over the accent and the dialogue, thinking, am I doing this the best I can do? And going to set, you know, I'm playing the lead in this new show and I'm, and I'm thinking, is this good enough? Am I good enough? Who could do better? You

• 33:49Speaker 01

  know, these things go through my mind all the time. I don't know whether it's a working class thing. I don't know whether it's a residual PTSD from childhood. I, I don't know, but I, I can manage it much better now. But success to me is a commodity. It's something you can, it, it can disappear. It's not guaranteed for life. Um, it's wonderful when you have it, but I've realised to put all my.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Energy and importance of my life on my success is a very dangerous thing to do. Um, and I've learnt to to now realise success is wonderful. There are there are peaks, there's troughs, life is long. I hope I have a long career. Some of the jobs will be fantastic, some of them will be trash. That's just the way movies are, right? Um, but I I'm getting much, much better at it. But, you know, because it the the movie stuff happened, and I think it's the success thing, my to accept success is really since the movie stuff happened because I was thrown into this like Hollywood world and

• 34:59Elizabeth Day?

  And you were thirty, this is the amazing thing about it.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Thirty years old, like, yeah, I was, I was like, I'd lived a life and I'd been struggling. I mean, I had so many jobs in my twenties just to be able to do the odd theatre show that came my way. I did everything. I worked on doors of clubs, everything. And then this happened and I was thrown into, you know, a film set, Clash of the Titans, Liam Neeson, like, Ralph Fiennes. And I'm like, you know, it's it wasn't like an easy progression. I went to Rada, you know, and then did a couple of TV shows and then Hollywood came calling. It didn't happen like that. I it did not happen. And when you read the book, you'll see like, I wrote a card to a casting director to do a play at the Donmar, couldn't get an audition. And so I went directly to her. I got the play and that play changed my life.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Casting directors came to that play and they were like, so why are you such a late starter? I was like, I'm not a late starter, I've been doing this for a decade.

• 35:52Elizabeth Day?

  You've been doing this since I was sixteen.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  I've been high kicking it down the street, love, you just didn't know. And so it's a commodity and I it's a valuable commodity, but I don't value everything about it because I think it it's dangerous. It's dangerous and accepting success is, I think, is just staying humble as well, you know, I think. I don't want it to be a negative thing to not accept success, but I sort of know where it is in my life now, and it's not everything. Happiness and feeling safe and surrounded by good people and my health, that's the thing I value. Success is great if it comes fantastic, but it doesn't, it doesn't mean enough to me. And I think it's probably me protecting myself.

• 36:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Well, you mentioned the residual PTSD potentially. And I wonder if there's something that strikes you as unreliable about a world that when you were a child, required you to pretend to be something you weren't, performance and shamed you for it. And it felt dangerous to do that. And now that same world is rewarding you for performance, for pretending to be things that you aren't on screen.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yeah. Jesus.

• 37:15Elizabeth Day?

  It's just come to me.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  No, but you're absolutely right. I mean, it is exactly that. It's exactly that. Yeah. I mean, I'm performing, I'm playing a character, my whole public persona. I try to bring as much of myself to my, but it's not exactly me, you know, there is a performance there and it is very much like who I had to be as a kid and then it was snatched away. The, I guess I'm risk assessing all the time of what I could lose.

• 37:47Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  And that's PTSD for sure.

• 37:51Elizabeth Day?

  You write in the book about your need to feel safe and how that's attached to finances as well, which I can, again, completely relate to. Do you think you'll ever get to the point where you've got enough in the bank that you feel safe? You're like, okay, I'll take some time off.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm not greedy. It's not like I have grand aspirations of a, you know, a manor house. And I know, I mean, I want to live a lovely life. It's about not just me, it's about the people I love around me as well. Um, I want to look after my mom and dad, that they ask for nothing, by the way, they're the, I have to force them to take anything. They're just so content and happy in their life, which makes me happy too that they are. I've been given this gift of an amazing career that has changed my life. My career has changed my journey, my trajectory in the industry, but also has changed my financial position.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  In a, in a, in a way that I can now take a breath and not have to worry about my mortgage. Or my mom and dad's mortgage, or the petrol in their car, or the food in their fridge, or the odd holiday. And look after my partner, the aura that washes over so many people because of what happened to me is immense. And it affects so many people in a good way. And I feel a responsibility for that. And I also feel very happy that I can do that for a lot of people, which is possibly why I like to work. I try and choose my jobs wisely. I say no to probably ninety percent of what I get offered. But I enjoy working. It's funny because a lot of people, you're the hardest working person in, in the business and I do, I do seem to work a lot.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  But I'm about to take three months off and I'm gonna travel and then finish building a house in, in Portugal. And oh God, I can't wait. So I balance it out.

• 39:40Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  But that safe word, my dad, you know, worked so hard. He was a bricklayer, you know, he worked out in the rain, the hail, the winter. And I was very aware from a very young age, he's not gonna be able to do this forever. And he's the only breadwinner in our family. And he got sick when I was in Avenue Q earning, you know, a little bit of money and I couldn't afford to look after them. And all of a sudden overnight, the income stopped and my dad was in his fifties. And I was like, it's potentially another forty years. And reality hit me very quickly that I had to think about how I was gonna look after them because I. I know what it's like to not be able to pay the rent. It doesn't make you feel

• 40:25Speaker 01

  safe. You feel very like you're living on the edge and I don't like that feeling. I was gonna give up the business just before I I I wrote that letter to that casting director because I thought I can't keep going like this. This is I'm not gonna find safety for me or my mum and dad if I keep doing this for a living. So I was gonna give it up.

• 40:44Elizabeth Day?

  I think that's a great lesson for anyone listening that it is never too late. I mean, I'm talking about you like you're very actual, you were thirty, but for an actor that is quite late to become a leading.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  All my the peer group that I joined at that point, everyone I did a movie with, they already had success and they were my age or younger and they'd been doing it for a decade. I felt so late to the game. That's why I never thought it was gonna last. I was like, you've you've missed the boat. This is just one of those lucky moments. You're gonna be in a movie and then you'll be back to, you know, working out what you're gonna do instead of the theatre thing, you know. And it just didn't happen. I kept going, why me? I don't get it. I still don't get it. I still don't get it. I want my story to be an example. This wasn't supposed to happen to me. But when it did, when that opportunity arose, my God, I took the reins and when wherever it's gonna go, I'm gonna

• 41:40Speaker 01

  go with it. The voice in my head could have stopped me, could have told me I'm not good enough. But the the positive one was a bit louder and I did it. And I think that's how you should live life. It's just you never know when it's taken away from you. You never know when that opportunities, by the way, they don't keep coming in life. I'd much prefer to get to seventy and go, I took every opportunity, instead of being at seventy going, ah, I wish I'd done that, because that might have changed something. Just go for it. If you can, you should, even if it fails. Who cares?

• 42:13Elizabeth Day?

  Totally. Premise of this podcast, you're preaching to the converted. Before we get on to your final failure, we've been talking about such deep and meaningful things. I just want to ask you some celebrity frippery.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 42:25Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. I would like to know, who is one of the nicest ever celebrities to you?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I've worked with loads of nice ones, actually. I've been very lucky.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  I, I, where should we start?

• 42:40Elizabeth Day?

  You got on very well with Ian McKellen.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Very well with Ian. It's not, it's impossible not to get, to not get on well with Ian McKellen. I mean, he's just lovely. He, he's, um, he's like Mother Hen. He, he opens up his home and he invites wonderful people and it's, he just wants you to enjoy and absorb the wonderful people that he's created a group of, you know, through the years, old and young. Uh, it's lovely. Yeah. And I've learnt a lot from Ian and I miss him. I don't see him very much anymore, but uh, it's, yeah, my time with Ian has always been very special. I mean, this is a huge name drop, but.

• 43:21Elizabeth Day?

  I've asked you.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  You have asked me, so I'm not, yeah, you're forcing it out of me. Jennifer Aniston. I wasn't expecting to have such a rapport with Jennifer, just because, you know, Jennifer's, Jennifer Aniston, she has a group of people and I got to do a movie with her.

• 43:37Elizabeth Day?

  You and Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler were in Murder Mystery together.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  That's right. But we really connected. She really cared and she wanted to listen, you know? We talked about many things and I always found her energy and she's really authentic. She, and she's again, sort of like Mother Hen. She has this warmness and she's incorporated. She brings you in and invited me to her house once for dinner and we sat chatting about relationships and, you know, really, really kind.

• 44:08Elizabeth Day?

  Who was on the other side of you that dinner, Luke?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  It was, um, it was Phoebe. Rachel and Phoebe. I was in the middle of Rachel and Phoebe that night. Oh my God. That was.

• 44:19Elizabeth Day?

  It was Lisa Kudrow.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Lisa Kudrow. That's right. Phoebe to most people.

• 44:22Elizabeth Day?

  Very cool. I love Jennifer Aniston. Having never met her, part of the reason I love her is not just because of sort of growing up alongside her and watching her on Friends, but also because of what she represents for me as a woman who is child free, not by choice, and how she navigates press intrusion around her romantic relationships and their ending.

• 44:46Elizabeth Day?

  And how she's really dismantled that idea of the sort of the tragic, I put that in quotation marks, lonely Jennifer Aniston and actually how she has only grown in strength and power through aging. And I love, I love to see it. So.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's a strong woman. I think she's impenetrable in a way. She's managed to navigate what must have been an extraordinary life. I mean, it cannot be easy being Jennifer Aniston. You can't just go to a restaurant. You know, I remember we used to went for dinner and her security would have to go to the restaurant beforehand to check exits. This means she's probably suffered from stalkers and that's a, that's a huge amount of weight to carry through life. We, you know, we went for dinner, we don't, no one came and checked the exit routes for us.

• 45:35Elizabeth Day?

  Well, actually. So can I tell the listeners about our dinner, which was magical?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:40Elizabeth Day?

  So Luke and his lovely Fran and I went for dinner with Dan Levy.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Dan Levy.

• 45:46Elizabeth Day?

  Because you were in Dan's brilliant directorial debut, Good Grief.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Elizabeth Day?

  And the reason you and I know each other initially, Luke, is we're going to talk about it. Why do you think we're allowed to?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yes, let's do it.

• 45:58Elizabeth Day?

  So I had a really lovely email a few years ago from a production company who said, we work with Luke Evans. And he wants to make your novel, The Party. He wants to, he wants it to be on screen. And we would like to option it with Luke Evans attached to play the part of Martin. Now, if any of you has read The Party, you will understand why that is such a massive deal. And I got this email, I was like Hollywood superstar Luke, sorry, let me just read this again. And you have been such an unbelievable champion of my work and my book, and I just want to thank you so much. And we're now within spitting distance of it getting made.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  And it takes, it takes a time and I'm just so glad it's going to happen.

• 46:42Elizabeth Day?

  I do so.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  And that's how we met.

• 46:44Elizabeth Day?

  It is, and thank you. It's just amazing.

• 46:52Speaker 02

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• 47:21Speaker 03

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• 48:01Elizabeth Day?

  Let's get on to your final failure.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:03Elizabeth Day?

  Which I'm so intrigued by, and I love the fact that you haven't over explained it. Failure to learn what my dad knows.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  My dad will learn something from scratch on his own with no teacher, no books. He can do almost anything. And if he can't do it, he will learn how to do it. He is a manual man. Doesn't have a university degree. Didn't, he went to college to learn how to bricklay. But my dad is somebody that will, now he uses the internet. He will go and he'll research and he'll, he'll work out how to do something. And sometimes it's something really technical or something very creative.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  And it can go from plants to electricity to plumbing. It's never ending. I take it for granted that he's in my life. And I just go, Dad, how would you do this? I just watch him sometimes and just, I admire that this is a man that is a self-taught human being. My mum is exactly the same. The two of them together, they don't need anyone. Because my life has been so busy, I sometimes, when they come down and I've got a few things that need to be doing. My dad just gets on and does it. And I sit there going, I don't know how to do any of these things that you're doing. And I really should. I regret that I have failed yet to pick up all these amazing

• 49:24Speaker 01

  life tools that my dad has learnt himself, taught himself. And he's a really good teacher as well, my dad.

• 49:31Elizabeth Day?

  You're right. There's something so impressive about someone who just doesn't need to employ someone to fix the sink.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:40Elizabeth Day?

  Can just go and do it themselves.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  And what I realised, the gifts my dad can give to me now are life tools that I can learn from him. And I'm adamant that I will start learning them and absorbing them. Because if I ever lose my dad, even those simple mundane things will remind me of him. Because that's who, that's what I, I know of him, you know, his, everything he does. He's brilliant.

• 50:06Elizabeth Day?

  And it's probably how he shows his love. I'm not.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  And that's their gift to me. My gift to them is to protect them and they don't have to worry about their mortgage or, you know, food and cars and life, cars, car, you know. And their, their gift to me is helping me with all these other things, you know, which are so valuable. By the way, workmen in London, they're not cheap. So I do, I've got a great deal.

• 50:35Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned earlier about your dad getting ill and having to give up work and the fact that although you were then still a jobbing actor, struggling to make ends meet a lot of the time, you were able to get enough money together and to borrow some from a friend to buy the house next door to them where you grew up.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:53Elizabeth Day?

  So that they had that income. And I wonder how that shifted and evolved your relationship with your dad, because my impression from reading the book and from chatting to you is that you were closer to your mum as a child. How did that moment maybe reshape your relationship?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Well, when my dad got ill, it was, it was very scary for all of us. You know, he's somebody that went out every day, never took a day sick, ever. Just worked, worked, worked. And then overnight, his job finished, he couldn't go back. Never did.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  They were scared. I could tell they were scared. I knew that that day that had happened, I had to think about them now, not me. And it was like the worst time for me because I was an understudy in the West End. You don't earn that much money. And I was just about covering my own bills and surviving in London. And all of a sudden, I realized, you know, his job had finished, didn't have a pension, too young to get a state pension, mortgage. I was like, oh, God, you know. And I thought I have to protect them. I didn't tell them I bought the house next door. I did it all without them knowing. And then I went home and just said,

• 52:14Speaker 01

  I've got the keys to next door. And they both cried. My dad really was moved. He couldn't believe I'd done this for them. But I didn't even think about it. It was like, if I don't do it, who will? You are my parents. And I was only at that point in my life because of them. And, you know, even when they didn't want me to be not in the religion and I'd left home, you know, they'd come and visit and they'd leave five hundred pounds in cash under my pillow. They didn't talk about it. Just leave me some money so I could survive. So this is my time. So I borrowed five grand from a friend. I'd saved five grand, put ten thousand pounds deposit on this house, put some tenants in there. And that's been a little

• 52:59Speaker 01

  income for them for the last fifteen years. They're all my flesh and blood, you know, and I love them. They're just awesome people.

• 53:10Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, what a beautiful place to end on, that that love is the wave that will crest. Will you just show me your tattoos? I know this is in audio form, but I will do my best to describe it to the listeners. There's this beautiful tattoo around Luke's right arm. Do you wear your watch on your right arm?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I do. I'm terrible.

• 53:28Elizabeth Day?

  That's fine. You're allowed.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  I'm right handed as well.

• 53:33Elizabeth Day?

  And it's, it looks like a sort of heartbeat that you get on those heartbeat machines, she said very technically. Now, what actually is it?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  So it's a, it's a continuous line that doesn't finish. And on the inside of my forearm, it looks like a heartbeat. There's a heartbeat up, a heartbeat down and a heartbeat up. But actually, when you look close, the first heartbeat up is the letter D for David, my dad. The second one is a Y, the heartbeat going down. And the last one is an L, and that's Luke. And they are forever linked and eternally connected, just like our journey through life. So that's the, that's the sweet, lovely story. The other story was, this was the first tattoo I ever had and I was still terrified of telling my mum. And I thought, how can I do this and manage to her be okay with it? I was like 39 or something.

• 54:24Elizabeth Day?

  This is your third coming out now.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So do you know what I thought? I thought, if I put their initials in it, it's gonna soften the blow. I already had the idea to do it. And then I put it on there and I said, I've had a tattoo. She was like, no. I said, but look, it's like David, Yvonne and Luke. She went, I love it. She said, easily pleased.

• 54:45Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, Luke Evans, you have been worth the wait and such a joy. Thank you so much for coming on How To Fail.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Thank you, darling.

• 54:53Elizabeth Day?

  We heartily recommend you follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.