Actor Luke Evans on being Hollywood’s LGBTQ macho man, fragile egos and feeling sexy in his forties
Luke Evans is a different type of Hollywood action hero. Our cover star for the Summer edition of City AM The Magazine talks to Adam Bloodworth about redefining the macho man, and feeling sexier than ever in his forties
Luke Evans starts his day with a skinny dip every morning. His home in Ibiza is a short walk from the beach, where he dumps whatever he’s thrown on and surrenders himself to the ocean.
Clothed, at least for now, he’s Zooming from The White Isle to plug his racy summer fashion range. Featuring skimpy short-shorts, the pieces would certainly turn heads in his Welsh hometown of Pontypool. If his character Owen Shaw in The Fast and the Furious wore the type of hyper-masculinised garms that helped him blend in, Evans’ new collection is all about standing out.
Hollywood’s only openly gay macho man laments that he has to vacate this paradise tomorrow as part of the launch: “I’m always very reluctant to leave the island,” he says glumly.
Luke Evans is one of Wales’ most famous exports, and has starred in dozens of Hollywood movies – but life wasn’t always like this. Born into a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, he came out aged 19, leading to him being ostracised from the religion that had shaped his life. Last year, he wrote about his internalised shame in his memoir, Boy From the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey.
But we’re not here to talk about that. Evans wants to tell me about his short-shorts. In promotional pictures for his nascent fashion brand, a soaking wet tee-shirt rests precisely upon his junk. The image, branded a ‘thirst trap’ by the tabloids, perfectly evokes Evans’ Ibiza lifestyle. Rather than part of a fashion shoot, it was taken as an afterthought one blissful Ibiza afternoon.
Actor Luke Evans: there’s always a way – especially when you love someone
“What makes me laugh is there was a gay magazine talking about the pics the other day, saying ‘Luke Evans wearing skimpy swimwear,’” he says. “I was like, who’s written this, some old lady from Cheltenham? The pictures are just beautiful. My mum thought they were fantastic. My dad said ‘I don’t think I’ll ever wear a Speedo.’ I said ‘That’s okay dad, we’re going to make a longer short for the older man and the men that are not so brave.’”
Evans runs BDXY with his partner Fran Tomas and the stylist Christopher Brown. They sell bucket hats, tote bags, scented candles, tees, and plenty of briefs. His face brightens whenever he mentions it. “It’s such a departure from learning lines and going to the far flung reaches of the world to film a movie or a TV show.”
There are no other openly LGBTQ men in Hollywood playing the types of action roles he inhabits so well. Not that he thinks about it much
Interestingly, early sales show women wear the tees as much as men, “which is wonderful,” beams Evans. He says the brand’s message is that everyone deserves to feel sexy: “The letters B, D, X and Y come from the words bold and sexy. These are very strong, powerful, confident, identifying words. You can feel bold and sexy in shorts and tee-shirt or swimwear or a tuxedo or absolutely nothing at all.”
Before his life balancing skinny dips with international film shoots, Evans spent his twenties house sharing in London and working intermittently in theatre. Things were going well, but not blisteringly so. At 30 his agent warned him against auditioning for a lead role in the Donmar Warehouse production of Small Change because they thought it was too ambitious. But Evans wrote directly to the casting director and landed the role.
A better agent followed and in 2010 he was cast in leading roles in five Hollywood movies including Clash of the Titans, Robin Hood and Tamara Drewe. It was the era that began to shape Luke Evans as we know him today.
“I possibly wouldn’t be an actor right now if I hadn’t got that job. So many things domino effected after that. Sometimes to push the needle you have to take the bull by the horns.” Giving life advice doesn’t come naturally – his inclination is to laugh at how corny this all sounds. “My internal dialogue is ‘What have you got to lose?’ A bit of ego maybe. Egos are as fragile as a rose, you’ve got to look after it, but a couple of petals are gonna fall off every now and again.”
Evans is the sort of actor whose roles are bigger than his name. He says he picks them based on whether they “bring something new, different and challenging to the screen.” There was Disney’s 2017 Beauty and the Beast, in which his Gaston was so warmly received that a spin-off prequel is rumoured; his critically-acclaimed turn as Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit trilogy; he was the titular hero in a rather shonky Dracula Untold. Then, of course, there is The Fast and Furious, the heist franchise exhaustingly dragged out over 14 (14!) feature films. They’re unlikely to titillate beyond their core audiences but their success is beyond doubt.
Given his leading man looks, there is surprisingly little that falls in rom-com territory apart from Tamara Drewe, in which he plays second fiddle to Dominic Cooper in attracting the attention of Gemma Arterton as the titular lead. Having developed a reputation for charismatic, brawny leads, over the past two years he has diversified into queer storytelling through indie film Our Son, a story about two male parents going through a divorce which premiered at London’s BFI Flare festival in 2023, and Netflix’s Good Grief, examining the death of a partner in a same-sex relationship.
Surprisingly, he has also released two pop and showtunes albums, one of which entered the UK top 10. Home recordings of Bridge over Troubled Water and You’ll Never Walk Alone have racked up millions of views online. They’re soft and schmaltzy and a million miles away from his acting identity.
Luke Evans stands totally alone. There are no other openly LGBTQ men in Hollywood playing the types of action roles he inhabits so well. Not that he thinks about it much. “I’m only reminded when someone brings it up,” he says. “It is just something that happened to me.”
He seems bored of analysing his place in the industry but he is more verbose on being a role model to young queer actors, especially those who relate to his macho style. He’s “very aware” of how powerful it is seeing a gay man play a straight hard-man role. “It’s hopefully positive and inspiring to other gay actors who possibly are masc-presenting and want to have a macho career in this business,” he says. “The world is their oyster as far as I’m concerned.”
Luke Evans: I’m excited for my fifties
But, even in 2025, Hollywood is still fearful of casting openly gay actors for fear of alienating Republican Middle America. Why is Evans the anomaly? Perhaps, due to the roles he takes, he simply passes as straight and people don’t think to google him when they get home. Evans says “of course” there’s some truth in that. “We’re talking about religious Bible belt people who believe in the man and the woman and there’s no other way.” But he doesn’t care what they think. “It doesn’t even come into my mind,” he says. “That’s not my job. My job is to do the best performance I can and bring something new, different and challenging to the screen. Outside of that I have zero interest or control.” Anyway, he says, “the best portrayals of anything by an actor is when they disappear and the character becomes real. Sometimes there’s no glimmer of me.”
Miraculously, Evans maintains a strong relationship with his parents despite the church viewing his sexuality as a sin. He says he respects that “they love their religion” and takes a remarkably pragmatic approach to the relationship, saying he “simply could not live” the life he was born into. “There’s always a way through,” he tells me in his lilting Welsh accent. “Especially when you love someone. It’s taken me a lot of time to get to this place and still have a smile on my face and be happy with who I am. I think they see that.
“They love the life that they have. Why should I be angry with that? I’m very grateful that they were able to accept that it wasn’t going to be my journey in life, and we somehow managed, in a very difficult set of circumstances, to find a compromise and respect for each other.”
But Luke Evans is still a work in progress. Confidence “comes and goes” and there are days when simply changing into short-shorts won’t cut through the noise. “There’s some days I feel great about myself, and there’s other days I just don’t, and that could be just, you know, my mental health or my physical image,” he says. “I don’t know, some days you feel good, some days you feel absolutely shit, and you’ve just got to swim with the punches.”
The quiet life in Ibiza
Evans has homes in London, Lisbon and Ibiza, and has been with Tomas since 2021. As well as running BDXY together, they share a mini dachshund called Lala Black Boop. Her Instagram account says she’s the “proud owner of two very obedient humans.” One day he fantasises about buying a place back home in Wales even though he hasn’t lived there since he was 16. “It took me until my forties to have the most happy relationship I’ve ever had,” he says. “We enjoy the same things. Our dog has been a wonderful thing. Literally the most joy ever. I can’t believe it took me till 46 to have a dog, but finally, we did it.”
He and Tomas “talk a lot, laugh a lot,” but they’re very different. Tomas is a gamer and Evans “can’t stand” his nerdy pastime, “but I’m good with that – you don’t go into that relationship thinking, ‘I’m going to change this person’. You go into a relationship going, ‘I like this person for all the things I like about them and the things I don’t like about them.’”
Middle age seems to suit him. “By your forties, if you’ve done it semi right you should be able to take a breather, take stock of where you’re at,” he says. “Forties are grea and I’m excited about my fifties.” Recent videos of Evans at Pacha in Ibiza on his Instagram suggests he’s still got stamina, which he laughs off. “I’m too old for that shit, honestly. The recovery after staying up takes me days. Usually my life is not like that. It’s very chilled and I’m in bed or watching TV by 10pm.”
Later this year he’ll return to Wales to film a project he can’t talk about but first his family are visiting him in Ibiza. He smiles at the thought of an end to these back-to-back Zoom calls. I imagine him slamming his laptop shut and cavorting to the seafront the moment this nonsense is over, shedding his clothes on the way.
Somehow we land back on the topic of the short-shorts. “If you feel bold and if you feel sexy, then you usually feel good about yourself, right?” He says it with calming reassurance. Repeat it into the mirror and maybe some of that sweet Luke Evans energy will rub off.