Evans sent

Singer, actor and very busy man Luke Evans tells William Hosie about his anger at Fifa, pride at being Welsh and new album to soundtrack Christmas

SINCE my conversation with the ever-rising Hollywood star and singer Luke Evans, Wales have crashed out of the World Cup. But when we speak, it’s just a day after the team and their supporters were banned from wearing rainbow bucket hats in Qatar.

“It makes me angry on so many levels,” says the Welsh actor, who is out as gay and was crowned Attitude magazine’s Man of the Year in 2020. “Fifa have been so cowardly about it. To give a platform to that kind of ignorance is sad and shocking.”

Evans has always been open about his sexuality, having left home at 16 to move to Cardiff in order to live more freely. He has a partner, with whom he was snapped holidaying in the summer, but is fiercely protective of his private life, saying previously: “It was the last thing I had, because everything else I’ve given to the world. My career was public, I was photographed, and all that stuff. My personal life just became the last thing that I had.”

He has definitely been living in the glare of the public eye over the last few years. He first became known to international audiences as Bard the Bowman in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, starting in 2012, but he got the chance to flex his singing (and comedy) muscles on screen as the villainous Gaston in Disney’s live- action Beauty and the Beast opposite Emma Watson in 2017. He’s barely stopped for breath since.