‘I thought I’d die at Armageddon’: Hollywood action hero Luke Evans on growing up gay as a Jehovah’s Witness

At the age of 13, Luke Evans faced an impossible choice – either be true to himself and embrace his sexuality, or stay true to God. If he told his Jehovah’s Witness parents that he was gay, they would be honour-bound to inform the church elders, and that would be the end of life as he knew it. If he didn’t tell them, he would be forced into a world of deceit or denial. He chose God.

Evans became the youngest boy in his south Wales congregation to be baptised. He formally and publicly devoted his life to Jehovah. If he came out as gay now, he would be banished from the church. All upstanding members of the congregation, including his mother and father, would be expected to break off contact with him; to act as if he was dead or simply had never existed.

Today, Evans is a Hollywood regular, cast in blockbusters such as Fast and Furious 6; in The Hobbit trilogy as Bard the Bowman; in Tamara Drewe and Blitz as a love interest for Gemma Arterton and Zawe Ashton respectively, and in Immortals as the Greek god Zeus. He is one of few out gay actors cast as straight leading men and action heroes. But what a punishing odyssey he has been on to get there. One that involves running away from home at 16, living the lie that he had always feared, being expelled from his church, and eventually coming out as gay twice – once in the UK when starting out in musical theatre, then years later in Hollywood as a superstar. His life would make a fabulous movie.

Evans has now written his memoir, Boy from the Valleys. It’s a sober title for a remarkable and shocking story. The 45-year-old grew up in Aberbargoed, a tiny town in south Wales that was home to the largest colliery waste tip in Europe. It also contained an improbable number of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, two of whom were his parents. The way Evans describes his father, David, he could have just as easily been a budding pop star as a young man. “He was the Harry Styles of the Valleys – waif-like, handsome, beautiful skin, with floppy hair,” Evans tells me. On 31 December 1975, David decided to devote himself to Jehovah because he had heard that Armageddon was happening that night, and he wanted to be on the right side. He rushed over to his girlfriend Yvonne to tell her the news. God was about to destroy the wicked, resurrect the dead and transform the Earth back into a paradise where the righteous could live in harmony, free from violence, disease and death.

‘My childhood was full of love’: Evans as a baby with his parents David and Yvonne in 1979. Photograph: Courtesy of Luke Evans

David and Yvonne turned on the television and waited for an update. Although Armageddon didn’t happen that night, they still became devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. They devoted themselves to God, worshipped at their local Kingdom Hall, married, and in 1979 Luke, their only child, was born. Evans says the three of them were inseparable, which made what was to happen later even more traumatic.

Evans is speaking to me from Portland, Oregon, where he’s currently shooting a film, playing yet another macho man. But for now he’s transported himself back to his childhood. His earliest memories are of knocking on the doors of strangers with his parents, attempting to convert them to the faith.

Growing up, he says, was in many ways wonderful. “My childhood was full of love, especially from my mam. Dad was the breadwinner.” While David kept the family afloat as a bricklayer, Yvonne gave as much of herself to young Luke as she did to God. “Every morning, I’d climb into bed with them on my mam’s side before I went to school,” Evans recalls. He was an extremely picky eater; his mum used to bribe him with Polo sweets to eat a sliver of carrot or a pea. “Mam was the one who sat with me patiently when I wouldn’t eat food.” Yet so many of his childhood memories are horrific. There was the door-knocking with his parents – even today, it upsets him to think about it. “Knocking on a stranger’s door, knowing that what we were about to say they didn’t want to hear, was terrifying. I hated it. In the summer holidays, we knocked on doors even more than when I was at school. Three hours on a Wednesday, the whole day on Friday, then the weekend.”

He was expected to shout his allegiance to Jehovah from the mountaintop. Whenever he entered a new class at school, it was his responsibility to address his teacher and fellow pupils about the rules of his religion. At secondary school, there were nine Jehovah’s Witnesses, but as the only boy he was designated to do the explaining. “I had to stand up and say, ‘We don’t do Christmas, we don’t do Easter, we don’t do birthdays and we don’t do assembly in the morning.’”

His peers taunted him as “Jovey” or “Bible-basher”. But that was just the start of it. By the time he was seven, they had decided he was different in another way. That’s when the name-calling got worse: “Bender”, “Gay boy”. Sometimes the insults were accompanied by floppy-wrist gestures. At first, he didn’t even know what it all meant, or why he was being targeted. But it didn’t take him long to work it out.

“What hurt the most was being pushed away. Somebody not wanting to sit next to me in class. At break time, not having anyone to hang out with or being safe in a crowd or gang. I didn’t have one. The girls who were Jehovah’s Witnesses had their own group and everyone else just seemed to merge into their little group and I didn’t find mine. That was the hardest part. It’s a terrible thing for a child to have to think, what’s wrong with me? I felt like I was dirty, like I had a disease. I had to keep analysing what it was about me that was making them do this: was it my voice? Was it that I was slightly effeminate?”

‘The only thing I could talk about to people I knew was the religion.’ Photograph: Mason Trinca/The Guardian

By the time he was in secondary school, he knew he was gay. He wanted to tell his mother that he was being bullied, but couldn’t. He was terrified he would go door-knocking with his parents, and one of the bullies would open the door and hurl homophobic abuse at him. “My mam and dad had no idea I was going through all of that. But when I was in a situation where this could be exposed to them, it terrified me.” Terror is a word he returns to time and again.

Does he think the door-knocking helped bring out the actor in him? “No, it didn’t give me anything other than terror. I simply hated it.” He pauses. There was something that did help him discover his talent for performance, he says. Twice a week, on Thursday and Sunday, he would have to attend his local Kingdom Hall with his parents. Every so often, he’d be assigned to read a passage from the Bible and explain its significance. “After the talk, the elders would give advice on how to improve it. They’d say, ‘Use more illustrations’ or ‘Pause for emphasis’ or ‘Use repetition’.” In the early days, he loved that aspect of being a Jehovah’s Witness, just as he loved dressing up in a suit and the sense of belonging. But none of that compensated for the downsides.

It seems strange that you dedicated yourself to Jehovah with your baptism at 13 when you were sure you were gay, I say. He nods, but explains that he regarded it as his final chance of salvation. “I thought maybe by doing that, the rest would disappear. I was so confused, and I had no one to talk to. The only thing I could talk about to people I knew was the religion. It consumed our conversation. I thought, well, focus on something else and hope the other thing goes away.” Was it as conscious as that? “Yes, this could take me away from my thoughts; the bad things. Every night in the congregation they read scriptures saying terrible things about the way I was feeling and who I was possibly turning into. All that was in my head was: if I don’t sort this out, I’m going to lose my mum and dad. I’m going to lose everything I’ve ever known and I’m also going to die at Armageddon, so I’m giving myself a death sentence unless I sort his out.” And you believed the death sentence? “Yep, 100%.”

What was more frightening – the thought of being disowned by your parents or Armageddon? Oh, Evans says instantly, losing his parents. “The only thing that mattered to me was my mam and dad. I didn’t really care about the dying bit once I realised who I was and what I needed to do to be who I was. To be happy, there was only one route I could take, and my only worry was that I’d lose Mam and Dad in the small period I had before Armageddon came. I had to make this decision: either you keep lying and live this life that is making you very unhappy or you take the risk and hope they don’t cut you off and pretend that you are dead.” The religion seems so unforgiving, I say. “It is,” he says. “It’s inhumane.”

At one point, his father discovered gay porn and literature in Evans’ bedroom. Without mentioning it to his son, he burned it. When Evans asked his mother about where his stash had gone, she told him, but said that she didn’t want to know about his sexuality; the implications were too terrible.

At 16, Evans left school and town for Cardiff and a new life. He decided that was the only way he could hold on to his parents while being true to himself. He got an admin job in a finance company and began a relationship with his line manager, Tom, 20 years his senior. An anonymous letter was sent to personnel exposing the relationship, and Tom was fired. The couple could see no future for themselves.

Evans describes his life as a series of “sliding doors” moments, and this is when the biggest door opened. Tom was friendly with an exceptionally wealthy couple who invited them to stay. That night, they discussed Tom’s dismissal from work. Evans, still a shy teenager, revealed that he liked to sing. After some cajoling, he agreed to perform Danny Boy for them. The next morning, the friends said they had a proposition – they would hire Tom to manage their trust fund and support Evans financially to put him through music and drama school.

This is where Evans’ story starts to verge on the implausible. At the age of 16, he was living in London with Tom in a luxury block of flats whose residents included Cilla Black. When he looked out of the window, he could see Andrew Lloyd Webber in his apartment opposite. Even today, Evans’ eyes are on stalks when he describes the luxury he was living in. He throws back his head and rocks with laughter at the ludicrousness of it all. “I know, right!” he says. “Exactly!” In his memoir, he refers to the Dracula-like teeth at the back of his mouth, and when he’s laughing I can see them. Fangs apart, he’s James Bond handsome, with a jawline sharp enough to chop wood.

After he left for London, he told his parents that Tom was his landlord and rarely at home because he travelled for business. David and Yvonne accepted the story happily. Meanwhile, Evans studied at the London Studio Centre for a three-year diploma in musical theatre, where his tutors recognised him as a star in the making. He had a great time – partying, shagging, doing drugs.

Not surprisingly, his relationship suffered. He and Tom began to feel their age difference, and split up. Evans suddenly found himself a typically impoverished, house-sharing student. The only difference was that when other students went home for the holidays, he felt he couldn’t. He was now 19, broke and feeling bleak in a way he hadn’t for three years. He hated lying to his parents, and was more frightened than ever of losing them. He confessed all to his mother, telling her that Tom had been his boyfriend, they had split up, and he was now living a lifestyle impossible to reconcile with being a Jehovah’s Witness. Yvonne took it in her stride, but did not tell his father. She was as fearful of losing Luke as he was of losing her.

Evans with Gemma Arterton in Tamara Drewe. Photograph: Peter Mountain/AP

As Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy

Evans was in his early 20s and working in musical theatre when an interview he had done with gay publication the Advocate, in which he discussed his homosexuality, came to the attention of the Jehovah’s Witness elders. They left a message on his phone saying if it was true that he was a “practising homosexual” he would be disfellowshipped – kicked out of the church. The elders demanded he return to Aberbargoed for his punishment. Evans ignored the summons. Instead, he called Yvonne, who agreed it was now time to tell David.

His father was devastated, reminded Evans he would die at Armageddon, and told him he was going for a walk. By the time he returned, David had realised he could not break off contact with his son. In absentia, Evans was disfellowshipped; his parents were there to witness his humiliation. I ask Evans how the elders would have worded it. “They would have said, ‘Luke Evans is no longer a member of the Christian congregation.’ The subtext is: ‘You can no longer speak to him, have any relationship with him, he is an outcast, he is now not part of any of our lives.’”

Was it a relief when he was disfellowshipped? “Yes, but it was painful, because I knew my mam and dad were sitting in that Kingdom Hall surrounded by people that knew them and knew me until I was 16. It must have been a horrible moment for them. I think they just went home, hugged each other and got through it. Ptffftssssch.” He exhales loudly, slowly, as if he’s been punctured.

His parents proved heroic, he says. They didn’t cast him out, nor did they give up on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Somehow they managed to stay true to both. And this is where his feelings about the religion become surprisingly nuanced. “I should be very angry, but I don’t feel it. Because while all this stuff that was happening to me was not pleasant, and I’d never want anyone else to go through it, I see two people who have found a life that works for them. They have wonderful friends, inside and outside the religion.” He stops. “But if it doesn’t work for somebody, they should have the right to say so. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve really, really tried, can I go? Is it OK?’ And that’s the bit you can’t do once you get baptised.”

‘There was never a point where I was ashamed.’ Photograph: Mason Trinca/The Guardian

Evans went on to enjoy enough success in musical theatre (the romantic lead in a touring production of Miss Saigon, Taboo, Piaf and Rent Remixed in the West End) to help his parents out when his father got sick and could no longer work. He bought the house next door to his parents for them to rent out, providing them with an income. Every so often, the elders would knock on their door and tell David and Yvonne that they knew they were still in touch with Luke and that it was a sin. David comes across in the book as obedient to the point of meekness. But there came a time when he’d had enough. Evans quotes David’s heroic speech to the elders in his book: “When I got sick, who put petrol in the car? Who paid for the electricity? Who paid for the food in the fridge? Was it you? No, it was our son.” As I read the passage aloud to Evans, he wells up. It goes on: “Even though you tried to keep us away from him, has Luke ever told us to leave the church? No. He’s moved as far as he possibly can from us so he wouldn’t bring reproach on the religion, and you’re still trying to drag him back into this. Well, never again. Don’t come to our house and tell us not to speak to our son, because if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t even have this house.” Evans weeps, his words coming out in choked spasms. “Yeah … yeah … it’s an incredible thing.” He smiles through his tears. “Good on him!” David lost his privileges in the church and was struck off from being a ministerial servant, one step below becoming an elder. And still, despite everything, David and Yvonne remain in the church today.

I notice a tattoo circling his forearm. It looks like a thinly sketched trace of a heartbeat. “It’s actually a D, Y and an L, for David, Yvonne and Luke – my dad, my mam and me,” Evans says. “It’s eternal. We’ve been through everything together and I think we will be for ever linked.” Another smile. “It’s my first tattoo. I was 39. I thought, the only way I’m going to get around this with my mam is to say that I did it with the letters of their names. And it worked a treat!” At 45, he admits he is still a mummy’s boy. “When my mam doesn’t like something, I still feel it. I want to please them.”

At 30, Evans had another crisis. His career in musical theatre felt precarious. He could go for months without a job, and it wasn’t getting any more secure for him. “I thought, am I still going to be renting a room in a shared flat in 20 years’ time?”

He considered giving up theatre for a dull but stable job – something in the service industry, perhaps. Musical theatre was demanding, and yet it was patronised by so many in the industry – he was seen as a mere hoofer, not a real actor. He had tried to break into straight theatre to no avail. When he asked his agent to put him up for a part in Peter Gill’s Small Change, about two Welsh boys, the agent told him he was reaching beyond himself. So Evans wrote to the casting director himself – and ended up getting the job. Another sliding door moment. From there, he got himself a new British agent, then an American one, and within weeks, he was offered the part of Apollo in the remake of Clash of the Titans.

It was bonkers, he says. Little Luke Evans who couldn’t get regular work in the West End was then cast in film after film. Five of them in his first year. The more movies he made, the more he found himself in demand and the bigger the paycheque. Hollywood decided he was a natural action man. His sexuality was never questioned. “I played straight rugged masculine men. I am queer, but I present in a masculine way. And thank God, in a way, because bloody hell, I wouldn’t have had the career I’ve had if I presented any other way.”

Has he seen any of the school bullies since he’s been making a living playing macho men? “Hahaha! It is quite brilliant, isn’t it? It does make me giggle. No, I haven’t.” He made his breakthrough in the era of the Twilight films, when the vogue was for men in touch with their feminine side. “There were a lot of pretty, young, muscle-bound twinks with no stubble and beautiful big doe eyes that could turn into wolves. But there weren’t a lot of me – Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton. There was a very small pot of these late-20s, early-30s masculine-presenting men, and I fitted into that category without even trying.”

In Fast and Furious 6. Photograph: Alamy

Backstage at the musical Taboo in 2012. Photograph: Courtesy of Luke Evans

One day, he walked along the red carpet at a premiere with a female friend. The Daily Mail decided she was his girlfriend and reported it in a gossip column. His management team advised him to say nothing, and he went along with it. But he felt uncomfortable. Although he’d never suggested he was straight, he felt complicit in his silence. Now he began to worry he would be exposed as gay, despite the fact that he had outed himself 20 years earlier and everybody in his life knew he was gay.

Sure enough, the rumours began on social media. Trolls suggested Evans was living a lie. They dug up the 2002 interview in the Advocate where he’d talked about refusing to be closeted. Yet as an emerging movie star, he had become coy about his sexuality, for example telling Cosmopolitan in 2010 that he hoped to adopt three dogs and “share them with someone else”. Having lived with homophobic abuse for so much of his life, it was now people in the gay community who began to taunt him.

It lasted for three years, and almost broke Evans. “It brought back an immense amount of PTSD that was connected to what I felt like when I was a kid, thinking I was going to lose my mam and dad.” The thing is, he says, nobody had asked him directly. And if they had, he would have told them.

The comments were hideous, including “I hope he dies of Aids”. When he talks about it, you can hear the exasperation in his voice. “The first thing is they don’t know who they’re talking about. They don’t know me. I didn’t just live as a gay man, I sacrificed all of my childhood friends. I had to move out at 16. I had to navigate London, drugs, sex, with no one to fall back on apart from the new people I’d found in my life. There was never a point where I was ashamed. I had a plan from the age of 12 to escape because I wanted to be the person I am.” He reddens in anger. “There was a lot of hate. I was being treated as if I’d turned my back on my identity and the community I was a strong part of.”

How did he get through it? “By throwing myself into work and keeping my real friends close to me. Whenever I wasn’t on a film set I was with my friends in London living the most normal of lives. My team was really supportive and I was ready for the conversation when it came up.”

When promoting the film Dracula Untold in 2014, he was asked by Women’s Wear Daily if he was setting a new precedent as an openly gay action star. Evans replied: “It’s good for people to look at me and think, this guy is doing his thing and enjoying what he’s doing and successful at it and living his life.” He waited for the fallout. “I thought it could shatter my casting credibility. But that was all in my head because the jobs kept coming.” Then the coin flipped again, he says, back to old-school homophobia. “I was getting the roles over my straight counterparts. Some were very pissed off.”

Evans has overcome amazing odds to get to where he is today. It’s inspiring, and yet at the same time there is something profoundly depressing that he is still an outlier; that Hollywood has made such little progress since the days when James Dean and Rock Hudson were forced to hide their sexuality to protect their careers. “And Montgomery Clift,” he adds with a smile. The redness has long subsided. “I thought over a decade ago, you won’t be on your own for long. Of course there are lots of gay actors, but playing the roles I’m playing I don’t think there’s many.” He tells me about the part he’s filming in Portland for a TV series called Criminal, adapted from an Ed Brubaker comic. “Right now, I’m playing the hardest, darkest, most sinister straight man.”

How hard is he in real life? “I can stand up for myself, which is something I couldn’t do when I was a kid. Not that I really need to these days.” Has playing hard-man roles toughened him up? “They’ve definitely given me confidence. Maybe superficial confidence, but they have made me feel stronger in my shoes.”

In his memoir, he says that Ian McKellen was one of the first to recognise the glass ceiling Evans had broken through. The great actor and gay activist told him: “Ooh look at you, you’re going to be a big butch star!” It meant a lot to McKellen? “It did. He was very aware of the ground I was treading. I just hoped it would have moved further than it has.” Can he think of any other out gay actors who would be cast in the part he’s currently filming? He thinks about it. “No,” he finally says. He makes it clear this is a regret, not a boast.

Since coming out for the second time, Evans has rarely talked about his private life. In Boy from the Valleys, he lays it all before us – from his primary school crush on a rugby-playing teacher to his relationships with older men, dating the model and actor Jon Kortajarena, and the three years he’s been with his current partner, Spanish architect Fran Tomas, with whom he has started a fashion and lifestyle business. He and Tomas share homes in London, Lisbon and Ibiza. Some days, he says, they think about having kids together; other times, they think they’ll stick with their godchildren (Evans has five). He says he couldn’t be more content. He has even managed to combine his movie career with singing – he’s released two albums of cover songs, the last of which reached No 4 in the UK charts.

As for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, he believes they have taught him plenty. “Having doors slammed in my face from as early as I can remember put me in good stead for when I became an actor and didn’t get a job. I didn’t give a damn. I’d be like, OK, all right, moving on. There’s another 10 doors. I’ll just keep knocking on them.” As an actor, he’s also extending his range – playing against type, as it were. Last year, he was hugely moving in the film Our Son, about two gay men whose relationship is breaking up and the impact it has on their child.

He still insists that a person’s sexuality should be an irrelevance. But, of course, he knows the reality is different. I ask what his life would be like now if he had stayed a Jehovah’s Witness? “I would have lived a very sad, isolated life, because I would have had to renounce my sexuality.” Ultimately, Evans believes that walking away from his religion was a life or death decision for him. “I don’t know whether I’d be here today if that had been the life I’d chosen to live,” he says.