Luke Evans, a Former Disney Hunk, Gets Candid on Aging, Anxiety and Being Shirtless on the Beach

Luke Evans, with a movie star face, enviable physique and impressive resumé, is not immune to the same spirals of regular folks.

“I still sometimes go to the gym and just feel very anxious. I look at myself in the mirror and just go, ‘You don’t look good enough,’ or ‘You’re letting it go.’ I 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 one gray stubble, whereas all my stubble is now gray,” the 45-year-old actor said during an especially candid interview on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast. “I’ve had to learn to be kinder to myself, but I have terrible anxiety about feeling good enough physically. Part of that isn’t completely bad [because] it gives you a little something to fight for, but it can be overwhelming. I’ve been on a beach just recently, and I didn’t want to take my T-shirt off. I don’t want to be in that place. I know I shouldn’t feel like that, but you know we are sensitive creatures, we’re very delicate. As hard as I may look, I am quite delicate.”

Evans — with a list of credits that feature such characters as the hunky villain Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Owen Shaw in the Fast & Furious franchise and Girion in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — knows that staying in shape is a requirement of the job. But if it weren’t, well, he might cancel that gym membership.

“Staying fit and in a certain physical fitness level now is definitely doing my job,” he explained. “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.”

It also helps with self-confidence, something he struggles with. “I walk down the street or 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’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.”

Evans, who has been making the rounds to promote his revelatory new memoir Boy From the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, also opened up to Day about growing up gay as a Jehovah’s Witness, getting caught with provocative porn as a teenager, and his views on money, success and supporting his aging parents.

In the podcast, he shared an anecdote from his youth about coming to terms with his sexuality. During trips with his mother to Cardiff, the capital and largest city in Wales, he would find himself perusing the shelves at a bookshop called Chapter and Verse. It was there he discovered E.M. Forster’s gay novel Maurice and provocative books featuring pornographic images of naked men by Tom Bianchi and Tom of Finland. He took the tomes home in what turned out to be a risky move.

“I used to hide it in a Kwik Save carrier bag in the lining of a chair that was my old sofa that my mom and dad had. One day, I went to look for it, and it had gone, and 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,” he recalled, adding that his parents had actually discovered the book months before. “I said, ‘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. 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.”

Despite the challenges and being “a bastard as a kid,” Evans told Day that he had a joyous upbringing by two “great” and patient human beings. As his father fell ill, Evans stepped up to help his family, something that he continues to do.

“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 or the food in their fridge or the odd holiday,” he said. “I want to look after my mum and dad, and they ask for nothing. 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.”