Luke Evans Wikipedia biography

Luke Evans (actor)

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Luke Evans
Luke Evans at WonderCon 2011 3.jpg
Luke Evans at WonderCon 2011

Born
15 April 1979 (age 34)
Aberbargoed, Wales, United Kingdom
Occupation
Actor
Years active
2003–present
Luke Evans (born 15 April 1979)[1] is a Welsh theatre performer, singer and film actor. Evans began his career in stage acting performing in many of London's West End productions such as Rent, Miss Saigon, and Piaf before getting his breakout role in Hollywood starring in 2010's Clash of the Titans remake, playing Apollo. Following his debut, Evans was cast in action and thriller films such as Immortals, The Raven and played Aramis in the 2011 revamped adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
In 2013, Evans starred as Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 and was cast as Bard the Bowman in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.[2]
Evans has been cast as the lead in the reboot of the comic book film The Crow[3] and is slated to portray the vampire Count Dracula in the film's origin story.[4]

Contents
  [hide] 1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Filmography
5 References
6 External links

Early life[edit source]
Luke Evans was born and raised in Aberbargoed,[5] a small town in the Rhymney Valley, South Wales, the only child of Yvonne and David Evans.[6][7] At the age of seventeen, he moved to Cardiff,[8] where he studied under the supervision of Louise Ryan, an established singing coach.[9] In 1997 he won a scholarship to The London Studio Centre in Kings Cross, London.[10] He graduated in 2000.
Career[edit source]
From 2007 to 2008 Evans starred in many of London's West End productions including La Cava, Taboo, Rent, Miss Saigon and Avenue Q as well as several fringe shows in London and at the Edinburgh Festival.
In 2008, he landed his most significant theatre role playing Vincent in the play Small Change written and directed by Peter Gill at the Donmar Warehouse, it was significant in that he gained recognition from film casting directors and US agencies from this play and he was also nominated for the Evening Standard award for best newcomer because of his performance in Small Change. Later that same year he did his second show at the Donmar Warehouse, Piaf, in which he played Yves Montand.
Evans got his first film audition aged thirty. In 2009, he landed his first film, playing the Greek god Apollo in the 2010 remake Clash of the Titans. Also in 2010, he appeared as Clive in the film Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, directed by Matt Whitecross, as the Sheriff of Nottingham's thug in Robin Hood, alongside Matthew Macfadyen (whom he would later play alongside again in The Three Musketeers), and played handyman and good guy Andy, in director Stephen Frears’ film Tamara Drewe, based on Posy Simmond's comic strip. Evans went on to portray DI Craig Stokes in Blitz (2011), the film adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel of the same name, in which he starred with Jason Statham and Paddy Considine. In early 2010, he shot the independent movie, Flutter, directed by Giles Borg.
Evans played the Musketeer Aramis in Paul W. S. Anderson's version of The Three Musketeers (filmed in 2010 and released in 2011). He was cast in a lead role in Tarsem Singh's Greek epic, Immortals (2011), in which he played the King of the Gods, Zeus. And at the end of 2010, he took a role opposite John Cusack in James McTeigue's film The Raven, replacing Jeremy Renner. In the film, released in 2012 and set in mid-19th century Baltimore, Evans played Detective Emmett Fields, who investigates a series of murders alongside Cusack's Edgar Allan Poe.[11] Shooting took place in Budapest and Serbia in November 2010.
In 2011, he shot No One Lives, a psychological horror film directed by Ryuhei Kitamara, in New Orleans, and began filming a role in Peter Jackson's upcoming three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit playing the role of Bard the Bowman.[2] In 2013, Evans played the antagonist Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 and was cast as Eric Draven in the reboot of The Crow and Dracula in the reboot Dracula Untold.[12][13][14]
Personal life[edit source]
In a 2002 interview, Evans said, "Everybody knew me as a gay man, and in my life in London I never tried to hide it" and that by being open he would not have "that skeleton in the closet they can rattle out".[15] In 2004, he said his acting career had not suffered by being out.[16] In September 2010, a female PR executive said she was dating Evans: "Luke's lovely – we're really old friends and it just sort of happened... We are nowhere near engaged but things are really good."[17]
Filmography[edit source]

Year
Film
Role
Notes

2003 Taboo Billy Short
2004 Miss Saigon Chris Musical
2004 Hardcore Craig Play
2009 Don't Press Benjamin's Buttons Benjamin's Father Short
2010 Cowards and Monsters Paul Short
2010 Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Clive Richards 
2010 Clash of the Titans Apollo 
2010 Robin Hood Sheriff's Thug 
2010 Tamara Drewe Andy Cobb 
2011 Blitz DI Craig Stokes 
2011 The Three Musketeers Aramis 
2011 Immortals Zeus 
2011 Flutter Adrian 
2012 Ashes Crewcut 
2012 The Raven Inspector Emmett Fields 
2012 No One Lives Driver 
2013 Fast & Furious 6 Owen Shaw[18] 
2013 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Bard Post-production
2014 Dracula Untold  Filming
2014 The Hobbit: There and Back Again Bard Post-production