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

The Welsh actor talks religion, rebelling and why he had to come out twice

The Guardian, UK/October 26, 2024

By Simon Hattenstone

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.

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?”

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 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.”

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