Growing up gay as Jehovah’s Witness in Welsh valleys

Hollywood star Luke Evans has described the difficulties growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness knowing he was gay.

Evans said he hid his sexuality, partly to protect his parents.

Jehovah’s Witnesses reject homosexuality and Evans – the Welsh actor whose films include Beauty and the Beast, The Hobbit, and Fast & Furious 6 – understood he would be expelled from the community if he came out, with implications for his family too.

“I just knew that because of the religion it would pose a very difficult situation for us, because the religion would not accept it,” he said.

Growing up as an only child in the south Wales valleys, he said he had a very close and happy relationship with his parents, David and Yvonne.

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales’ Lucy Owen programme he said he had no choice but to try to fit in during his early teens, despite knowing he was gay.

“I guess I chose the religion. I’m not sure I believed in any of it, if I’m blatantly honest, but I didn’t have much choice.

“I was too young to leave home legally. If I’d have left, they’d have dragged me back.”

He said he “didn’t want to put his mum and dad through that” and realised he had to “try and make the best of a situation” and that is what he did.

In his new memoir, Boy from the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, Evans describes how he was bullied at school because of his religion and sexuality and had a “horrible time”.

“I was the perfect target, I was a Jehovah’s Witness, I was a very quiet kid, I was an only child. I didn’t have the ability to fight back.

“When you’re that young and you have to think about why they’re calling you things, terrible word… a kid should never have to think, what’s wrong with me? Why is it me they’re picking on? Because bullies can be brutal.”

He said Jehovah’s Witnesses were very peaceful.

“They’re a very pacifist society. They don’t fight, they don’t argue, so I wasn’t really prepared for these big bullies in school. But I just got through it.”

His religion meant that for a long time, he was unable to perform in any school shows.

“I didn’t do any of that as a Jehovah’s Witness.

“For many years, I wasn’t allowed to be in the choir because they sang religious songs. I couldn’t be in any Christmas shows because we didn’t celebrate Christmas. There was no harvest festival… no Easter.”

He said when he was 14, the school did a non-religious show at the end of the year and that was the first time he got to do something in school and the only time he sang and performed.

He left Aberbargoed in Caerphilly county at 16, and moved to Cardiff, where he started singing lessons.

He worked as a mail boy in a bank before getting the opportunity to study at theatre college in London.

He was 19 when he came out to his parents, who are practising Jehovah’s Witnesses to this day.

“We’ve been through a lot together. What we’ve done is we’ve come through two very different journeys in life where love has risen above everything.

“Respect, love and understanding, and that’s what we have had to have with each other, because we’ve all chosen different paths, but it doesn’t mean we can’t love each other and be in each other’s lives.

“I respect them. They respect me.”

He said he was very grateful they had managed to navigate it.

“It’s not easy, and I know a lot of ex-Witnesses don’t have any relationship with their parents or their families. They’ve cut them off completely.”

He added that he had lost many friends from the age of 16 and younger.

“I have none. I just have one school friend who wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness.

He is now 45, and the Jehovah’s Witness elders discovered he was gay when he was in his early 20s.

He was starring in the musical Taboo and did an interview for LGBT magazine The Advocate talking about his life in London.

He remembers them finding out and contacting him.

“Somehow it managed to get back to the witnesses who then wanted to speak to me about it.

“They wanted me to go back and speak to them, but the time had gone by at that point, and I had been living a very different life, and I was very happy

“I was successful and doing my job and something I always wanted to do. That was the moment when I was disfellowshipped from the religion.”

Evans remains one of few out gay actors cast as straight leading men and action heroes in Hollywood.

“When I was doing these roles as a gay man, these macho, straight roles, there was no-one to compare myself to, there was no-one to refer to of my generation doing what I was doing, playing the role I was playing.

“It was quite difficult to navigate that and understand what I should do and how I should do it.”

Despite all the challenges Luke said he faced growing up as “a gay boy in the south Wales valleys”, he has found happiness and success.

He said it took him months to decide whether to write his memoir, but decided he wanted to help other people who may be able to relate to a journey like his.

“I may have started as a bullied kid in a small, little village, but I’ve really fought for what I wanted and for who I am. And I am there now, and I’m very happy…

“This the story of hope. This is a story of love. This is a story of overcoming obstacles.

“This is a story of just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going and knowing that there’s something better.”

Luke Evans’ interview with Lucy Owen on BBC Radio Wales will be broadcast on 13 November and will be available to catch up with on BBC Sounds.