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

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

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 [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. We're at a time where B2B selling, that's businesses selling to other businesses, is tougher than ever, which is why I want to tell you about LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This is a sales intelligence platform that helps professionals reach and engage high-value customers, drive higher revenue, and increase sales performance. Sales Navigator helps you target the right buyers, flags job changes or which accounts you should prioritize, so you can find those buyers that are most likely to convert. LinkedIn has one billion members and Sales Navigator taps into that

to give you the most up-to-date data, enabling you to unlock conversations with the people that matter. Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a 60-day free trial at LinkedIn.com forward slash advanced. That's LinkedIn.com forward slash advanced for a 60-day free trial. Let LinkedIn Sales Navigator help you sell like a superstar today. Just go to linkedin.com forward slash advanced and get started. 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. You're talking to like a romantic here, serial monogamist, loves sharing life with somebody. I'm the worst. 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. 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' 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 at the London Studio Centre. After 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, whether it would have helped him. Unbelievably, he did it all anyway, without my help. Luke Evans, welcome to How to Fail.

Thank you. How are you? I'm so good. It is such a joy to have you here. I'm excited to be here. We've been trying for a while and we will get onto 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?

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. But at home, it was a very warm environment, a loving family. I was flourishing and had a very loving family. I loved singing. We were a very sociable family. We had lots of friends. 12 would have been the first year I'd been in secondary school, which not to be a Debbie Downer, but the secondary school was quite miserable. And so that first year was probably the worst because I'd come from a little junior 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 12, but when I got home, I could just pretend I was somebody else. 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 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. Sounds exactly the same as me. And you were bullied both for being a Jehovah's Witness and for your sexuality almost before you'd said it to yourself. Kids can be brutal, you know, and it just is a thing. And I listen 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'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. I just wasn't ready for the bullies. 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, 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, they'd put Jovi and Bender in the same, they'd target me with these two names, 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 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 I knew what would happen to people like who I knew I was turning into. 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. And it's so interesting that now you sit before me, Luke Evans, a Hollywood movie star, to so many people, the embodiment of an ideal masculine physique. How much do you think those two things are related? 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 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 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 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. There's a terrible thing, but that is definitely something that went on. But it's quite ironic that I've, you know, now, you know, people see this version, you know, but, um, it's not the person, the little kid is a very different human being. Yes. And I wonder how you feel inside, although you present externally in a certain way.

Inside, I still sometimes go to the gym and just feel very anxious. Look at myself in the mirror, um, and just go, God, you don't look good enough or you're letting it go or look at my face. The terrible part of my industry is that 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. Just so many things I keep being reminded of. I've had to learn to be kinder to myself, but I have terrible anxiety about feeling

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

resonate with so many people. Yeah. And you know, men, we're always told, you know, like, you've, you know, just be strong. And I always admire, like I walked 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've learned 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, our little people. They're with us all through our life. And the one I carry was bullied and didn't like who he was and was always quiet. 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 Long Island ice 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 know that I outwardly present this strong character, but I suffer with insecurities and lack of confidence and self-worth and all those things all the time.

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 in terms of the performance? 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 mom, and dad, every week of our lives, we would knock on 20 doors, maybe 19 of them would probably

be rejected or not even opened, and you knew they were in sight 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 mom and dad and I remember just the door would shut and my mom would go, oh well, next door. And I guess I observed that and I'm fine with rejection. 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 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 must have had some positive effect on me. I mean, my career, 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 there was times I got for a job and I thought, this is going to be mine,

I didn't get it. You know, it was constant. That was how the 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.

Great advice. Let's get on to your failures. Okay. then move on. Great advice. Let's get onto your failures. So your first failure is your failure to find your soulmate until you were in your 40s. Yeah. And first, 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 learned things from, but as the relationship unfolded, we weren't compatible. It just realized that it wasn't

going to work and 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. One of them is my best friend from 20 years ago. We were partners for three years. We own a house together. I mean, it's really odd, but anyway, we're friends. But it's a little sad, I feel like, at getting to 40. I sometimes think, well, wouldn't it have been great to have gone through the whole

journey with someone? But this is me being idealistic and, you know know, of course that's not how it is. And maybe what I've learned from these relationships and being alone and all those things, and I've learned 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. It felt like we met yesterday. 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 don't say that flippantly. Easy is 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 forties, I have met this person that just completely, it just top entails my life. I feel like it's my traveling 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 a confidence I have because of him. It's just lovely. 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. Yeah. Do you think that informed, I mean, it sort of delayed your

progression into relationships? 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, 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 be who I knew I was. And I couldn't do that under my mom 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 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 plan 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 talked to my friends and they says, when did you leave home? And I say, 16, they're like, 16?

It's like, chilled like a child, you know? And I guess I was, but 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 not going to change. And I knew very little other than that. What comes across so strongly is how much you love your parents. Oh yeah. I mean, they're just amazing people. 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 totally understandable. And I see that to be put through this is wrong.

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 in the closet, I was screaming every night because I couldn't tell anyone. I was going through the hormonal changes

as a pubescent teenager. I didn't want to be in the religion. I hated knocking doors. Everything about my life was wrong. I was just miserable. I was so miserable with my mum and dad. They were so patient. They were so young. They dealt with it all. Their only child leaves home at 16. 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.

Even that meant that I was possibly going to die at Armageddon. I hadn't put the cherry on the icing of the cake by that point, but it was a big thing for them to lose me. 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. And they've just been so kind and accepting. Even though they have their religion, 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. 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. Just like this, just like this chair. Well, and what you don't know Luke, is that before you arrived today, we stuffed it full. But tell us that story. 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 loves shopping, I hate shopping, I 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 found this one little bookshop in this little arcade in Cardiff, it was called Chapter and Verse. I'd never seen it before, so I walked in and I said hello to the shopkeeper. Then I started looking around the books. In one corner was the LGBT section. I didn't really realize straight away, but as I pulled a book down, I realized 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. 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 men. So I started to build up every week. I'd come to Cardiff with my mom. She'd go to Debenhams and I'd go and spend my pocket money that I'd saved from my little jobs I used to have in the valleys.

And I'd buy books and I'd just built up a collection of different things, different books. Some of them were photographic, Tom Bianchi and Tom of Finland, 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 sofa that my mum and dad had. They bought a new one and I took the armchair. I was the only one that knew it was there and one day I went to look for it and it had gone. 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. I was like, you're so stupid. You shouldn't have put it there. Because 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, 13 years old, 14 years old, 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 and they'd found it months before and they hadn't told me, which made me feel even worse. And I said, well, 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 if you don't talk about it, it might go away. 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 thought that was the end. 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. 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. 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, Charlotte Doorstep, you became very good friends with Charlotte Church. You got into a relationship with an older man who was your boss in a call center, 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 mom about your true self. 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. I mean, I'm not offended by it. I mean, it's, it's, it's, but it's sad that, you know, people have to do that. And it usually comes with massive anxiety, upset, tears, the thought of losing people, not being accepted, being rejected. I would rather have not to have had to have done it for sure. And how old were you when you told your mom?

I was 19. She reacted in a way that seems typical of her, which was very loving. She had to force it out of me, but she knew I was upset and she didn't know why. 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'd just broken up from my first relationship and I had nowhere to go. So I was coming home with some kind of strength of identity, but in a very broken way, because I'd just broken up from my first relationship and I had nowhere to go.

I'd moved out. 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 or three hours, we went for a walk. We sat on the swings in the park at the bottom of the street.

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

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We've lived through a really, really interesting and seismic shift in terms of how we view sexual identity. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's been an incredible thing. And part of that has been Hollywood's changing attitudes 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? Yes, without realizing 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 big deal. And then all of a sudden, it was like first day at school again, you know,

and it was an international platform where people who'd never heard of me, all of a sudden I'm in these big tentpole studio films playing these masculine presenting leading men, and they put two and two together and came up with the wrong number. You know, it's what people assume. It just happened.

And all of a sudden I had to announce it again and go through the whole thing. But this time I wasn't going to lose my mom and dad. 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 is too much of a risk. What if the audiences doesn't don't, 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. And I was like, it's 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 stuff I did, you know, um, at 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 unfortunately it was taken verbatim and it caused some really horrible backlash, especially from the gay community. Not all of them, of course, because most of them knew me. So they knew that it wasn't true. But it was a moment where I was like, wow, all that I've been through up until this point, and I'd lived a happy life, people think that I'm hiding. And I've got what they call a beard, you know, my friend Holly, but no, it was just, I knew she'd want to do the red carpet.

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 going to be taken away from me. But you know, it wasn't in my hands. It was 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. And keep working hard. You're one of the hardest working people 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? Well, most of the time internally, I've managed to deal with this feeling internally. I've never felt that I deserve the success I have. I think there's way more talented people out there. Even this last job, 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 thinking, is this good enough?

Am I good enough? Who could do better? You 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 don't know, but I can manage it much better now. But success to me is a commodity. It's something you can, it can disappear.

It's not guaranteed for life. It's wonderful when you have it, but I've realized all my energy and importance of my life on my success is a very dangerous thing to do. And I've learned to now realize success is wonderful. There are peaks, there's troughs, life is long. 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? But I am getting much, much better

at it. But you know, because the movie stuff happened, and I think it's the success thing to accept success, is really since the movie stuff happened, because I was thrown into this Hollywood world. And you were 30. This is the amazing thing about it. I was 30 years old. Like, yeah. I was like, I'd lived a life and I'd been struggling. I mean, I had so many jobs in my 20s 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, Rafe Feinstein. It wasn't like an easy progression. I went to RADA and then did a couple of TV shows and then Hollywood came calling. It didn't happen like that. 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. So I went directly to her. I got the play and that play changed my life. Casting directors came to that play and they were like, so why are you such a late start? I was like, I'm not a late start. I've been doing this for a decade. You've been doing this since I was 16.

I've been high kicking it down the street, love. you just didn't know. And so it's a commodity and it's a valuable commodity, but I don't value everything about it because I think it's dangerous. It's dangerous and accepting success is, I think it's 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 mean enough to me and I think

it's probably me protecting myself as well. 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. Oh my God. Yeah. Jesus. It's just come to me. No, but you're absolutely right. I mean, it's exactly that.

It's exactly that. Yeah, I mean, I'm performing, I'm playing a character. My whole public persona, I tried to bring as much of myself to my public, but it's not exactly me. 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. I guess I'm risk assessing all the time of what I could lose. And that's PTSD for sure. 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? Okay, I'll take some time off. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm not greedy. It's not like I have grand aspirations of a manor house. I know, I mean, I want to live a lovely life. 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. I want to look after my mom and dad. They ask for nothing, by the way, 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 in a way that I can now take a breath and not have to worry about my mortgage, or my mum and dad's mortgage, or the petrol in their car 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 90% of what I get offered, but I enjoy working. It's funny because a lot of people, you're the hardest working

person in the business and I do, I do seem to work a lot, but I'm about to take three months off and I'm going to travel and finish building a house and be in Portugal and oh God, I can't wait. So I balance it out. But that safe word, my dad worked so hard, he was a bricklayer, he worked out in the rain, the hail, the winter, and I was very aware from a very young age, he's not going to 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 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 40 years. And reality hit me very quickly that I had to think about how I was going to look after them, because I know what it's like to not be able to pay the rent. It doesn't make you feel safe. You feel very like you're living on the edge. And I don't like that feeling. I was going to give up the business just before I wrote that letter to that casting director,

because I thought I can't keep going like this. This isn't, I'm not going to find safety for me or my mum and dad if I keep doing this for a living. So I was going to give it up. 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 Jerry Apte. You were 30, but for an actor that is quite late to become a leading actor. It is. Telling me, 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 going to last. I was like, you've missed the boat. This is just one of those lucky moments. You're going to be in a movie and then you'll be back to working out what you're going to do instead of the theater thing. 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 went wherever it's going to go, I'm going to go with it. The voice in my head could have stopped me, could have told me I'm not good enough. But 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 70 and go, I took every opportunity, instead of being at 70 and going, 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? Totally. The premise of this podcast is you're preaching to the converted. Before we get onto your final failure, we've been talking about such deep and meaningful things. I just want to

ask you some celebrity frippery. Do it. Okay. I would like to know who is one of the nicest ever celebrities to you? Oh, I've worked with loads. Nice ones, actually. I've been very lucky. Where should we start? You got on very well with Ian McKellen. Very well with Ian. It's impossible to not get on well with Ian McKellen. I mean, he's just lovely. He's like Mother Hen. He opens up his home and he invites wonderful people and 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. It's lovely. Yeah. And I've learned a lot from Ian and I miss him. I don't see him very much anymore, but it's yeah, my time with Ian has always been very special. I mean, this is a huge name drop. I've asked you. 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 was a group of people and I got to do a movie with her.

You and Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler were in Murder Mystery together. That's right. But we really connected. She really cared and she wanted to listen. We talked about many things and I always found her energy and she's really authentic. And she's again sort of like mother hen. She has this warmness and she's incorporative. 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. Who was on the other side of you that dinner Luke? It was Phoebe. Rachel and Phoebe. I was in the middle of Rachel and Phoebe that night. Oh my god. That was- It was Lisa Kudrow. Lisa Kudrow. Yeah. That's right. Phoebe to I was in the middle of Rachel and Phoebe that night. Oh my God. It was Lisa Kudrow. Lisa Kudrow. That's right. Phoebe to most people. 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 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 and actually how she has only grown in strength and power through aging. And I love to see it. So, 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 went for dinner and her security would have to go to the restaurant beforehand to check restaurant. I remember we 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 huge amount of weight to carry through life. We went for dinner, no one came and checked the exit routes for us. Well, actually, Luke.

Well, actually. Can I tell the listeners about our dinner, which is magical. So Luke and his lovely Fran and I went for dinner with Dan Levy. Dan Levy. Because you were in Dan's brilliant directorial debut, Good Grief. 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? Yes, let's do it. 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 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. And it takes, It takes a time. And I'm just so glad it's going to happen. And that's how we met. It is.

It's just amazing. My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. And knowing I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds.

By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted from CBC's Personally, available now. Hello ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast. After last year, he's no stranger to the spotlight. And it turns out he might even love the limelight. You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny love the fact that you haven't over explained it. Failure to learn what my dad knows.

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. He doesn't have a university degree, he went to college to learn how to bricklay, but my dad is somebody that will now uses the internet. He will go and he'll research and he'll work out how to do something. And sometimes it's something really technical or something very creative. 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 life tools that my dad has learned himself, taught himself. And he's a really good teacher as well, my dad. You're right. There's something so impressive about someone who just doesn't need to employ someone to fix the sink. Yeah.

Can just go and do it themselves. Yeah. And what I realized the gift 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 what I know of Him. Everything He does is brilliant. And it's probably how He shows His love. Exactly.

Yes. 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 food and cars and life, cars, car, you know. Um, and they, their gift to me is helping me with all these other things, you know, which are so valuable. By the way, work men in London, they're not cheap. So, uh, I do, I've got a great deal. 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 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? Well, when my dad got ill, it was very scary for all of us. 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. 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 that 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, 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, well, 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 even when they didn't want me to be not in the religion and I'd left home, they'd come and visit and they'd leave 500 pounds in cash under my pillow. They didn't talk about it. Just leave me some money so I could survive.

So this was my time. So I borrowed five grand from a friend. I'd saved five grand, put 10,000 pounds deposit on this house, put some tenants in there and that's been a little income for them for the last 15 years. They're the only, they're all my flesh and blood, you know, and I love them. They're just awesome people. I mean, what a beautiful place to end on 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. You wear your watch on your right arm. I do. I'm terrible. I'm a belt. No, that's fine. You're allowed. I'm right handed as well. And it looks like a sort of heartbeat that you get on those heartbeat machines, she said, very technically. Now, what actually is it? So 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 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 sweet, lovely story. The other story was this was the first tattoo I ever had and I was still terrified of telling my mom. And I thought, how can I do this and manage to be okay with it? I was like 39 or something. It was your third coming out. So yeah, so do you know what I thought? I thought if I put their initials in it,

it's going to 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, David, Yvonne and Luke, she went, I love it. She said, easily pleased. Oh, Luke Evans, you have been worth the wait and such a joy. Thank you so much for coming on How To Fail. Thank you, darling. 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.