Actor Luke Evans has reflected in his new memoir, Boy From the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, on what it was like to grow up gay in a “very religious” Jehovah’s Witness household.

The Beauty and the Beast star recently released his new memoir, Boy from the Valleys: An Unexpected Journey. In the book, Evans details “his humble beginnings in a quaint Welsh mining village to the dazzling lights of Hollywood” and even recalls homophobic bullying in his youth. 

Before he got his big break in 2010’s Clash of the Titans, he had to navigate his journey to self-acceptance as a gay person, largely without any LGBTQ+ role models to look up to. 

In an exclusive interview with PinkNews, Evans said: “I grew up in a very religious household where the word ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’ would never, ever have been spoken about. There was no outlet, there was nowhere for me to access anything. 

“The only gay people I saw were on TV, and I didn’t see myself in those men,” he admitted.

Bear in mind that the first pre-watershed same-sex kiss on British TV took place in 1974. The first out gay character on a British TV series, however, didn’t land on our screens until 1985. 

“My mum and dad found gay literature in my bedroom which I’d been hiding in a Quicksafe carrier bag in the lining of this armchair I had in my bedroom,” he said, laughing. 

“I can laugh about it now, at the time it was terrifying, only because I knew from what had been drilled into us in the kingdom of all that I was as bad as a murderer. That’s what the Bible said.

“My parents did what many parents do and just said, ‘We don’t want to talk about it.’ So, we didn’t for several years. I left home, it wasn’t until I was 19 that I spoke to my mum about it.”

He noted that heterosexual people largely don’t understand what it’s like to have to carry that burden for so long. “Again, [this is something] that these straight kids [and] teenagers don’t have to think about, but gay children do.

“Like, am I going to lose the people I love because of who I am? Yeah, that s*** is horrible, and I did have to go through that. 

“Luckily, it didn’t happen, it took time though. It wasn’t just like, ‘Okay, that’s fine, we’ll carry on.’ It wasn’t like that at all. It was, ‘We really have to get through this,'” Evans concluded.

The Boy from the Valleys: An Unexpected Journey is available now.

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