Luke Evans

Luke George Evans was born on Easter Sunday, 15 April 1979, in Pontypool,[4] and brought up in Aberbargoed,[1] a small village in the Rhymney Valley, Wales, the only child of Yvonne and David Evans.[5][6] He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, though he left the religion when he was 16 and left school at the same time.[7]

At age 17, he moved to Cardiff,[8] where he studied under the supervision of Louise Ryan, an established singing coach.[9] In 1997, he won a scholarship to London Studio Centre, then in Kings Cross, London.[10] He graduated in 2000.

Evans at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

From 2000 to 2008, Evans starred in many West End productions including La Cava, Taboo, Rent, Miss Saigon and Avenue Q, as well as several fringe shows in London and at the Edinburgh Festival.

In 2008, he landed his most significant theatre role playing Vincent in the play Small Change written and directed by Peter Gill at the Donmar Warehouse. For his performance, he gained recognition from film casting directors and US agencies and was nominated for the Evening Standard Award for Outstanding Newcomer. Later that same year he did his second show at the Donmar Warehouse, Piaf, in which he played Yves Montand.

Evans got his first film audition at age 30. In 2009, he landed his first film, playing the Greek god Apollo in the 2010 remake Clash of the Titans. Also in 2010, he appeared as Clive in the film Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, directed by Matt Whitecross, as the Sheriff of Nottingham's thug in Robin Hood, alongside Matthew Macfadyen (whom he would later play alongside again in The Three Musketeers), and played handyman and good guy Andy, in director Stephen Frears' film Tamara Drewe, based on Posy Simmond's comic strip. Evans went on to portray DI Craig Stokes in Blitz (2011), the film adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel of the same name, in which he starred with Jason Statham and Paddy Considine. In early 2010, he shot the independent movie, Flutter, directed by Giles Borg.

Evans played the Musketeer Aramis in Paul W. S. Anderson's version of The Three Musketeers (filmed in 2010 and released in 2011). He was cast in a lead role in Tarsem Singh's Greek epic, Immortals (2011), in which he played the King of the Gods, Zeus. And at the end of 2010, he took a role opposite John Cusack in James McTeigue's film The Raven, replacing Jeremy Renner. In the film, released in 2012 and set in mid-19th century Baltimore, Evans played Detective Emmett Fields, who investigates a series of murders alongside Cusack's Edgar Allan Poe.[11] Shooting took place in Budapest and Serbia in November 2010. In 2011, he shot No One Lives, a psychological horror film directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, in New Orleans, and began filming a role in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, playing the role of Bard the Bowman.[2]

Evans at the Queen's Birthday Party held at the Royal Albert Hall in 2018

In 2013, Evans played the antagonist Owen Shaw in Furious 6, and in 2014, he played Dracula in the film Dracula Untold.[12][13][14] Evans was cast as Eric Draven in the reboot of The Crow. In June 2014, he joined the cast of the film High-Rise with Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons.[15] In January 2015, Evans officially exited The Crow to pursue other projects.[16] The same year, he was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men.[17]

In 2016, Evans appeared in the thriller film The Girl on the Train, co-starring Emily Blunt.[18] In 2017, he had the villainous role of Gaston in Disney's live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, co-starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens;[19] and also played the lead role, William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, in the film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

In 2018, Evans starred in TNT drama The Alienist, as newspaper illustrator John Moore.[20] The following year, he announced the release of his debut studio album, At Last, which was released on 22 November 2019.[21]

On 8 November 2019, Evans starred in Roland Emmerich’s epic war movie Midway, along with Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Mandy Moore, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Dennis Quaid and Woody Harrelson.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Evans is also set to reprise his role as Gaston in an upcoming Beauty and the Beast prequel limited series for Disney+, in which he will co-star alongside Josh Gad (with the latter serving as co-creator, co-writer and executive producer).[28] He is also set to play The Coachman in Robert Zemeckis' live-action film adaptation of Disney's Pinocchio.[29]

Evans was awarded Man of the Year at the ninth annual Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards.[30]

In his early twenties in an article in the UK's Gay Times, Evans stated that people would approach him in gay pubs to tell him that they could not believe that he was gay.[31] In a subsequent 2002 interview with The Advocate in the U.S. he said that although his (then) part (in Taboo) was that of a straight man "everybody knew me as a gay man, and in my life in London I never tried to hide it".[31]

By his late thirties, he was less willing to discuss his sexuality with the press, asserting his private life to be private.[32] Little is reported about his private life, and he deliberately shields his family from the press.[32] He stated in response to a question about the opinion that "Hollywood" might have of his sexuality that his private life was not connected to "Hollywood", and that "Talent, success, what you do in your personal life — I don't see how one should have an effect on the other."[32] As such, although openly gay since the Gay Times interview, he is rarely labelled so.[32]

• At Last! The Live Tour (2021)[37]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Luke Evans.

• Luke Evans at IMDb
• Official website