Luke Evans
(born 15 April 1979) 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 breakthrough
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. Evans has been cast as
the lead in the reboot of the comic book film The Crow and is slated to portray
the vampire Count Dracula in the film's origin story.
Luke Evans was born and raised in
Aberbargoed, a small town in the Rhymney Valley, Wales, the only child of
Yvonne and David Evans. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Cardiff, where he
studied under the supervision of Louise Ryan, an established singing coach. In
1997 he won a scholarship to The London Studio Centre in Kings Cross, London.
He graduated in 2000.
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. 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. 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.
