Luke Evans - ‘If I didn’t have to take my top off on a movie set, I’d let myself go’

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0:40Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that firmly believes learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. Before we get to our esteemed guest, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing With Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Luke Evans to give you a flavour of what I mean. You're talking to like a romantic here, serial monogamist, loves sharing life with somebody. I'm the worst. If you want to send me one of your failures for my guest and me to give advice on, follow the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions.

1:24Thank you so, so much.

1:31My guest today modestly describes himself as a South Wales Valley boy done good. It's a characteristic humility that has its roots in Luke Evans's upbringing. Raised as a Jehovah's Witness, he spent his weekends knocking on doors to warn neighbours of the impending Armageddon. He knew he was gay, but being open about his sexuality would mean banishment from the church and heap shame on his parents. It was an internal conflict that led to him leaving home at 16 and moving to Cardiff to study singing. At 17, he won a scholarship to the Performing Arts College, the London Studio Centre. After graduating, he starred in many West End productions, including Taboo, Miss Saigon and Avenue Q.

2:20Aged 30, he made the move into films, landing roles in a slew of Hollywood blockbusters including Clash of the Titans, The Hobbit trilogy, The Fast and the Furious franchise and Beauty and the Beast. He's also released two cover albums, the latest of which reach the top five in the UK charts. But as Evans recounts in his newly published memoir, Boy from the Valleys, It has been a long journey to success and self-acceptance. He writes, I wonder if I could have had the chance to tell my younger self these words, whether it would have helped him. Unbelievably, he did it all anyway, without my help.

3:03Luke Evans, welcome to How To Fail. Thank you. How are you? I'm so good. It is such a joy to have you here. I'm excited to be here. We've been trying for a while. We have. And we will get on to our particular story, I'm sure, as part of this podcast. But first of all, I want to congratulate you on your extraordinary memoir, which had me riveted and moved page by page. And I wonder if we could start there with that young Luke Evans, the one that you hope your words might have saved. What was Luke like when he was 12? Oh, he was a handful. He definitely had an opinion on everything. There was the Luke at school who was a mouse and hid in the shadows and tried to avoid the bullies and never spoke up.

3:53But at home, it was a very warm environment, a loving family. I was flourishing and had a very loving family and I loved singing. We were a very sociable family. We had lots of friends and 12 would have been the first year I'd been in secondary school, which not to be a Debbie Downer, but you know, the secondary school was quite miserable. And so that first year was probably the worst because I'd come from a little junior school that was opposite my house to the big school, which was a mile away. Yeah, it wasn't pleasant, but I don't know how I was able to do that at 12, but when I got home, I could just pretend I was somebody else.

4:39There's a bit of it that I can relate to. I also had a really unhappy secondary school experience when I was at school in Belfast with this English accent. And then going home, I felt that I was a slightly different person. It's like I was performing in both elements, performing in the sense of pretending everything was okay at home and then performing at school so as not to let the bullies get to me which sounds exactly the same as me and you were bullied both for being a jehovah's witness and for your sexuality almost before you'd said it to yourself kids can be brutal you know and they it just is a is a thing and i you know i listen to my god kids talking and you know i don't think much has changed they say they target the same things in boys and girls and i guess i was probably i mean i was an only child very pacifist parents not aggressive at all.

5:26You know, you'd walk away from a fight. You don't swear. You don't do anything bad. You try and be a good member of society. And I just wasn't ready for the bullies. And so I was like the perfect target. All my friends were girls because all the Jehovah's Witnesses in the secondary school were girls apart from me and this one other boy. And I was the one that had to speak up and we were told really to stick with each other. It was the obvious you know words to use against me I didn't know that I was gay at six seven but I knew I was maybe different but no concept as to what that meant so when I was called these horrible names you know they'd put Jovi and Bender in the same they'd target me with this two names you know not one or the other it was Jovi Bender one was attacking my religion that I was a part of and the other one was attacking something I didn't know that I you know was the slang for being gay And I didn't know what that was.

6:21But I also knew that as the years went by, those early years, formative years, I knew that what I was feeling and who I was was dead against what the religion believed. And I knew what would happen to people like who I knew I was turning into. As someone who was bullied at a formative age, one of the things that you say in your book, which I found very self-aware and very moving, is that you were left feeling physically incompetent. And it's so interesting that now you sit before me, Luke Evans, a Hollywood movie star, to so many people, the embodiment of an ideal masculine physique. how much do you think those two things are related staying fit and in a certain physical fitness level now is definitely to do with my job i mean i'm sure if i didn't have to go and take my top off on a movie set uh every now and again i'd probably let it all go um i wouldn't care so much but it is part of my job i get cast in certain roles that require a certain amount of physical you know strength and aesthetic it's been good because it's probably kept me on the straight and narrow.

7:34But as a kid, I just immediately was questioning what it is they were bullying me specifically. Why me? Why not the other boys in the room? Why not anyone else? Just why is it me? And it's a terrible thing for a kid to have to think, what's wrong with me? There was nothing wrong with me. There was nothing wrong at all. Nobody was telling me that. And so I started to critique my own physicality, you know, my big ears, my voice, maybe it was a bit high. Maybe a gesture was a giveaway. Maybe, uh, maybe the clothes I was wearing, maybe the, it was, it was relentless self analysis, which a kid shouldn't go through that.

8:14You shouldn't have to think about what's wrong with you. It's a terrible thing, but that is definitely something that went on, but it's quite ironic that, you know, now, you know, people see this version, you know, but, um, it's not the, the, the, the person, the little kid is a very different, different human being. Yes. And I wonder how you feel inside, although you present externally in a certain way. Inside, I still sometimes go to the gym and just feel very anxious, look at myself in the mirror and just go, God, you know, you don't look good enough or, you know, you're letting it go or I look at my face.

8:55The terrible part of my industry is that, you know, you're just reminded constantly of the decades of film you've done when you had not a crease on the face and not a gray not one gray stubble whereas all my stubble is now gray and uh it just so many things i keep being reminded of so i've had to learn to be kinder to myself but i have terrible anxiety about feeling good enough physically there's everything part of that isn't completely bad i think it gives you a little something to fight for but it can be overwhelming you know like I've been on a beach just recently and I just I didn't want to take my t-shirt off I know I'm I don't want to be in that place I know I'm I shouldn't feel like that but you know we we are you know sensitive creatures we're very delicate as hard as I may look I'm quite delicate I think that's a really beautiful and generous thing for you to share because I know it will resonate with so many people yeah and you know men we're always told you know like you've you know just be strong and I always admire like I walk down the street or we're in a bar or in the gym and look at some guy and he's like super confident and I'm just like wow and it just seems effortless when I do it it's a whole lot of work when I have to present that I'm not massively confident about lots of things about me but I I've learned to deal with it, not ignore it and understand why and process it.

10:28But it doesn't go away. There's a little boy inside of me. We all carry our little kids, you know, our little people. They're with us all through our life. And the one I carry was bullied and didn't like who he was and was always questioning. And I have that with me now. But as an adult, I understand it more. And so it doesn't consume me. It doesn't stop me from doing stuff. I did finally take my T-shirt off on the beach, but it took me about three Long Island iced teas and a bit of confidence. And then I took my top off. I don't think I'm on my own here. I think it's common. I think it's important for people to know that I outwardly present this strong character, but I suffer with insecurities and lack of confidence and self-worth and you know all those things all the time although i want it to change for you for you to feel better i think that it's the thing that probably gives you this grace that is so obvious whenever you meet luke evans hollywood superstar i wanted to ask you just one more thing about younger luke which was about being a jehovah's witness and how it's a strange question and it sounds a bit trivializing and I don't intend it to be, but I wonder how much of it you felt was preparation now looking back for what you do now in terms of knocking on doors and being rejected.

11:55Did that help you with auditions? Yeah. In terms of the performative? Well, it must have. I mean, it must have. We've put ourselves in positions, I'm talking about Jehovah's Witnesses, me, my mum and dad, every week of our lives, we would knock on 20 doors, maybe 19 of them would probably be rejected or not even opened. And you knew they were in sight or slammed in our faces. One may listen to the introduction of what we had to say, but it was very rare. And that was something I was aware of from literally a toddler. And I'd look up at my mum and dad. And I remember just the door would shut and my mum would go, oh well next door and i guess i observed that and i don't i'm fine with rejection it doesn't bother me at all even um certain relationships i've had you know where people they you know they lick their wounds for years and they can't move on and stuff i give myself the moment to process it and then move on because i think whether we like it or not you could be the most successful human being on the planet, you'll still be rejected somewhere along the line by someone or something.

13:09And I think you have to realize it's part of our human journey to, to, to be, to have a door slammed in your face, to feel rejected, to not get what you want, to be told, no, this is life. And I've realized, I think as an adult, looking back in retrospect, that, you know, that must've had some positive effect on me. I mean, my career, you know, people talk about the fact that I was this huge star in the West End. I was not. It was terrible. It wasn't good. It was fine. And I was ready to give it up. It wasn't constant. I couldn't afford to keep supplementing it. But, you know, there was times I got for a job and I thought this is going to be mine.

13:46I didn't get it. You know, it was constant. That was how musical theatre is. You know, you just audition, audition, audition and hope for the one job that you can pay your bills. I never dwelled on it. I just don't think it's healthy. Give it a minute and then move on. Great advice Let's get on to your failures So your first failure is your failure to find your soulmate until you were in your 40s Yeah And first I need to just say before we talk about that I'm not saying all the relationships before the person I've met who is my soulmate Some of them were absolute car crashes And I think we can all relate to that And they don't need speaking about But there are some that I learned things from but as the relationship unfolded we weren't compatible it just it just realized that we it wasn't going to work and you know either painfully or graciously they came to a conclusion and we finished some of those people are still in my life and some of them are very very close to me one of them is my best friend from 20 years ago we did we were partners for three years we own a house together i mean it's really odd but anyway we're friends but it's a little sad i feel like at getting to 40, I sometimes think, well, wouldn't it have been great to have gone through the whole journey with someone?

15:02But this is me being idealistic. And, you know, of course, that's not how it is. And maybe what I've learned from these relationships and being alone and all those things, and I've learned so much that I can bring so much more to a relationship now. I'm a very different person from 10 years ago, really different, which is weird. I can see that now. I value this relationship so much and I value this person so much. Fran, let's give him his name. We've been together almost four years and it literally has gone like that. It felt like we met yesterday. It's just seamlessly just gradually growing and morphing into something bigger and stronger and happy.

15:50It's always happy. It's positive. it's easy which I say I don't say that flippantly easy is not a it's a hard thing to find in a relationship I don't think I've ever had an easy relationship but I have it now and as much as it's sad that we didn't meet earlier on um I'm so grateful that in my 40s I have met this person that just completely, it just top and tails my life. I feel like it's my traveling partner, my business partner. We giggle together. We go to the gym together. We're also fine apart. We've just spent a month apart. You know, we're good. We're really good. There's a strength. There's a confidence I have because of him.

16:42It's just lovely. I wanted to ask you about your journey with your sexuality. Because of the way that you grew up and the internal shame that you felt at the idea that you would have to tell your parents and they would be told by church elders never to speak to you again, that is a crushing weight for a young boy to live with. Yeah. Do you think that informed, I mean, it sort of delayed your progression into relationships? I mean, it delayed me coming out. I couldn't. I just had to keep it secret. I had no one to tell. I had no non-Jehovah's Witness friends. So I kept it to myself my whole childhood um it was only when I left home and I didn't leave home because I wanted to I left home because I needed to because I couldn't lie to them anymore and I had to find my I had to be who I knew I was and I couldn't do that under my mum and dad's roof out of respect for them and their religion but also out of respect for myself I knew that I had to find a new life and I knew it was just on a 45 minute train journey to another city, I'd find new people.

18:05But at 16, that is a very young age to have to make that decision to go alone, to do it alone. I had no brothers and sisters, no one knew. And I thought that was the best way. I'll just start again. And that's what I did. I'd had that planned from the age of 12 because I knew that legally I could leave home at 16 and so I just went well you've just got to suck it up for the next four years and get through it and then leave and I did exactly what I planned when I talked to my friends and they says when did you leave home and I say 16 they're like 16 it's like chilled like a child you know and I guess I was but I I just knew that I couldn't carry on there being with these feelings and knowing that it wasn't going to change you know this person I'm I'm not going to change and um and I knew very little other than that what comes across so strongly is how much you love your parents oh yeah I mean they're just they're amazing people and I it's so and I'm so glad that I feel like this.

19:16I know a lot of people who have been in my position or similar are very angry, and it's totally understandable. And I see that, you know, you know, to be put through this is wrong. You know, religion shouldn't force you to have to make a decision between being your true self and losing your family and everyone around you. But I'm okay with it because I love my mom and dad. My upbringing was joyous. They are great human beings, very patient. I was a bastard as a kid. I was a nightmare. Like a teenager. Imagine I was in the closet. No, I wasn't in the closet. I was screaming every night because I couldn't tell anyone.

19:53I was going through the hormonal changes as a pubescent teenager. I didn't want to be in the religion. I hated knocking doors. Everything about my life was wrong. And I was just miserable. I was so miserable with my mom and dad. And they were so patient. They were so young. They dealt with it all. Their only child leaves home at 16. And they didn't turn their back on me. Of course, they didn't know at that point, but I was moving away from the religion and even that meant that I was possibly going to die at Armageddon I hadn't put the icing on the cherry on the icing of the cake but at that point but you know it was a big thing for them to lose me you know I didn't go to the kingdom hall I didn't knock doors I wanted nothing to do with it I wanted to start my new life and they've just been so kind and accepting even though they have their religion we have managed to find a balance where we both can respect each other and our choices and our lives and our journeys.

20:50They're different, but they can work parallel with each other. I mean, it is an amazing achievement that really for all three of you, there's an incident in the book where your parents discover a stash of gay literature and porn that you'd hidden in the lining of an armchair. Just like this, like there's a chair. well and what you don't know Luke is that before you arrived today we stuffed it full but tell us that story yeah so I had um my mum would go to Cardiff often on the weekend and so I'd go on the train with her and she loves shopping I hate shopping always have and so I drop her off at Howells's which is the department store or Debenhams or Primark or whatever and i just go wandering and i'd look around the bookshops and i found i found this one little bookshop in this little arcade in cardiff and it was called chapter and verse and um i'd never just found it i'd never seen it before so i walked in and i said hello to the shopkeeper and then i started looking around the books and in one corner was the lgbt section and i didn't really realize straight away but as I pulled a book down I realized it was Maurice the famous gay novel and then a book about safe sex and then a book about oh so many different books I mean and it was like I kept looking over my shoulder thinking he was going to come and tell me off but of course it's gay literature he was I think he was a gay guy himself that was the moment I've had an outlet where I could learn just about that I wasn't on my own there was even a romantic novel about gay men so I started to build up every week I'd come to Cardiff with my mum she'd go to Debenhams and I'd go and spend my pocket money that I'd saved or that from my little jobs I used to have in the valleys and I'd buy books and and and I just built up a collection of different things uh different books some of them were photographic uh tom bianchi and tom of finland no lots of different books and i used to hide it in a quick save carrier bag in the lining of a chair that was my old mom and old sofa that my mom and dad had they bought a new one and i took the armchair and i was the only one that knew it was there and one day i went to look for it and it had gone and uh my whole life flashed before my eyes in that very moment I put the cushion back on the chair and I sat on it my whole body was shaking because this was the moment I was dreading I was like you're so stupid you shouldn't have put it there because I knew the only two people that would have looked was my mom and dad and so I had to confront my mom and dad about it.

23:38I packed a case upstairs, 13 years old, 14 years old, thinking that after the conversation I will have to have, that they will tell me to leave. Because that's what I would have been brought up to know. I knew other families in our area, our district, where their son had been thrown out, and they'd never spoken to him again. But I was ready. I was like, okay. I clearly had processed what ifs before this moment and I knew that this is what would happen so I went and confronted my mom and dad about it and they'd found it months before and they hadn't told me which made me feel even worse and I said where is it and she finally said well your father took it into the garden lit a bonfire and burnt it page by page and we don't want to talk about it again which is a very common thing for parents often maybe not so much nowadays but you know if you don't talk about it it might go away um also for us to talk about it there was this huge thing that would happen if we accepted it acknowledged it it would mean some serious shit would go down and none of us wanted that although i was thought that was the end i thought i would be on a train to cardiff sleeping on a park bench literally that's what i thought but it didn't happen um we didn't talk about it for many years later and made it even more frustrating i probably got even more angry at that point you know it's a lot of internal tension for a young man to deal with as you mentioned you do go to cardiff you start being coached in singing by a fantastic singing coach louise you met charlotte church charlotte doorstep you became very good friends charlotte church you got into a relationship with an older man who was your boss in a call center who was very nice to you, but you were saying to your parents, oh, he's a friend and a nice landlord.

25:29And then at some stage, it does get to a point where you get very, very low and you have to tell your mom about your true self. And I want to preface this by asking how you feel about the terminology around coming out, whether you think that that's an accurate phrase because I know some people find it borderline offensive to imply that there's anything they need to come out about. I mean, I'm not offended by it. I mean, but it's sad that, you know, gay people have to do that. And it usually comes with massive anxiety, upset, tears, the thought of losing people, not being accepted, being rejected.

26:12I would rather have not to have had to have done it for sure. And how old were you when you told your mum? I was 19. She reacted in a way that seems typical of her, which was very loving. She had to force it out of me, but she knew I was upset and she didn't know why. And I just said, well, remember by this point, I'd been living a happy life, gay life in London for three years. So I was coming home with some kind of strength of identity, but in a very broken way, because I'd I'd just broken up from my first relationship and I had nowhere to go I'd moved out and you know so I said if I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you everything I'm not going to hold back and a lot of it you're probably not going to like to hear and she said well I'm your mother you need to tell me because it's upsetting to see you like this so I just let it roll two three hours we went for a walk we sat on the swings in the park at the bottom of the street oof the sun went down we processed as much as she could process and um and then we went back to the house and she said let's not tell dad yet i think i need to process this for she's so clever she knew exactly how to manage the situation and she did i wasn't a jehovah's witness really you know no one knew me as a jehovah's witness but you know it's a big thing it was a lot for her to deal with but you know she managed it

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28:47We've lived through a really, really interesting and seismic shift in terms of how we view sexual identity. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's been an incredible thing. incredible thing yeah and part of that has been hollywood's changing attitude that arguably hasn't changed quickly enough towards having again i don't like this phrase but openly gay leading men in a variety of roles and you really have been a trailblazer for that but it came i imagine at a cost there was a sort of dance that you had to play for a while is that right yes without realizing it i mean i hadn't thought about it when all this started i you know because everybody knew i was gay it was like well no no big deal and then all of a sudden it was like first day at school again you know and and and it was an international platform where people who'd never heard of me all of a sudden i'm in these big temple studio films playing these masculine presenting leading men and they put two and two together and came up with the wrong number you know they it's what people the people assume they you know it's just it just happened and all of a sudden I had to announce it again and go through the whole thing but this time what I was I wasn't going to lose my mom and dad but this time there was another thing I could lose because there was no one in front of me that had done it where I can go well they were okay there was none of my age playing my characters that I was doing at that point I couldn't refer to another actor that had done it of course they were gay actors they were much older Ian McKellen for example but I was you know just started getting this success and I thought it's going to be taken away from me it's going to be pulled from underneath me because they're not going to accept this the audiences the studios it's too much of a risk what if the audiences doesn't don't they know how are they going to believe him in a straight relationship on screen and I could see it all just about to just fall between my fingers and I was like it just never ends I was like I and I thought well I can't do anything about it I'm not going to deny it I don't want to deny it it was painful for me because the first couple of interviews or stuff I did you know um the first premiere I did I took my best friend Holly she's like the most glamorous person I knew I know she's always dressed up to the nines and I've known her for years so I said should we do the red carpet come down the red carpet she's all dolled up and the daily mail did an article saying like this is his girlfriend but you know he actually and it was all it was just sensational press and and unfortunately it was taken verbatim and it caused some really horrible backlash especially from the gay community not all of them of course because most of them knew me so they knew that i that you know that wasn't true but uh it and it was it was a moment where I was like wow all that I've been through up until this point and it lived a happy life um people think that I'm hiding and I've got um what they call a beard you know my friend Holly but no it's like it was just I knew she'd want to do the red carpet and uh yeah so it was a funny old place to be in that point and the thought of losing this new business this new career the one that was changing my life before my very eyes was going to be taken away from me.

32:11But, you know, it wasn't in my hands. It was out of my control. And I just had to go along with it and be authentic and be real and tell it the way I wanted to tell it, which is what I did. And keep working hard. You're one of the hardest working people in showbiz. And that brings us on to your second failure, which is such an interesting one. And I imagine it's connected to everything we've been discussing, your failure to accept your success. How does that manifest itself? Well, most of the time internally, I've managed to deal with this feeling internally. I've never felt that I deserve the success I have.

32:56I think there's way more talented people out there i even this last job you know i i will spend so much time going over the accent and the dialogue thinking am i doing this the best i can do and going to set you know i'm playing the lead in this new show and i'm and i'm thinking is this good enough am i good enough who could do better you know these things go through my mind all the time i don't know whether it's a working class thing. I don't know whether it's a residual PTSD from childhood. I don't know, but I can manage it much better now. But success to me is a commodity. It's something you can, it can disappear.

33:44It's not guaranteed for life. It's wonderful when you have it, but I've realized to put all my energy and and importance of my life on my success is a very dangerous thing to do um and i've learned to to now realize success is wonderful there there are peaks there's troughs life is long i have a long career some of the jobs will be fantastic some of them will be trash that's just the way movies are right um but i am getting much much better at it but you know No, because the movie stuff happened. And I think it's the success thing to accept success. It's really since the movie stuff happened because I was thrown into this like Hollywood world.

34:34And you were 30. This is the amazing thing about it. I was 30 years old. Like, yeah, I was like I'd lived a life and I'd been struggling. I mean, I had so many jobs in my 20s just to be able to do the odd theatre show that came my way. I did everything. I worked on doors of clubs, everything. And then this happened and I was thrown into, you know, a film set. Clash of the Titans, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes. And I'm like, you know, it wasn't like an easy progression. I went to RADA, you know, and then did a couple of TV shows and then Hollywood came calling. It didn't happen like that. It did not happen.

35:09And when you read the book, you'll see like, I wrote a card to a casting director to do a play at the Donmar. Couldn't get an audition. So I went directly to her. I got the play and that play changed my life. Casting directors came to that play and they were like, so why are you such a late starter i was like i'm not a late starter i've been doing this for a decade you've been doing it since i was 16 i've been high kicking it down the street love you just didn't know and uh so it's a commodity and i it's a valuable commodity but i don't value everything about it because i think it's dangerous it's dangerous and accepting success is i think is just staying humble as well you know I think I don't want it to be a negative thing to not accept success but I sort of know where it is in my life now and it's not everything happiness and and feeling safe and surrounded by good people and my health that's the thing I value success is great if it comes fantastic but it doesn't it doesn't mean enough to me and I think it's probably me protecting myself.

36:14Yes. Well, you mentioned the residual PTSD potentially. And I wonder if there's something that strikes you as unreliable about a world that when you were a child required you to pretend to be something you weren't, performance, and shamed you for it. And it felt dangerous to do that and now that same world is rewarding you for performance for pretending to be things that you aren't on screen oh my god yeah jesus it's just come to me no but you're absolutely right i mean it it is it's exactly that it's exactly that yeah i mean i'm performing i'm playing a character my whole public persona i tried to bring as much as myself to my but it's not exactly me you know there is a performance there and it is very much like who i had to be as a kid and then it was snatched away the the i'm i guess i'm risk assessing all the time of what i could lose yeah and that's that's ptsd for sure you write in the book about your need to feel safe and how that's attached to finances as well, which I can, again, completely relate to.

37:35Do you think you'll ever get to the point where you've got enough in the bank that you feel safe? You're like, okay, I'll take some time off. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm not greedy. It's not like I have grand aspirations of a manor house. and I know I mean I want to live a lovely life it's about not just me it's about the people I love around me as well um I want to look after my mom and dad they ask for nothing by the way I have to force them to take anything they're just so content and happy in their life which makes me happy too that they are I've been given this gift of an amazing career that has changed my life my career has changed my journey my trajectory in the industry but also has changed my financial position in a way that I can now take a breath and not have to worry about my mortgage or my mom and dad's mortgage or the petrol in their car or the food in their fridge or the odd holiday and look after my partner.

38:36The aura that washes over so many people because of what happened to me is immense and it affects so many people in a good way. And I feel a responsibility for that. And I also feel very happy that I can do that for a lot of people, which is possibly why I like to work. I try and choose my jobs wisely. I say no to probably 90 % of what I get offered, but I enjoy working. It's funny because a lot of people, you're the hardest working person in the business. And I do, I do seem to work a lot, but I'm about to take three months off and I'm going to travel and finish building a house in Portugal. And oh God, I can't wait.

39:13So I balance it out. But that safe word, my dad, you know, worked so hard. He was, a bricklayer you know he worked out in the rain the hail the winter and I was very aware from a very young age he's not gonna be able to do this forever and he's the only breadwinner in our family and he got sick when I was in Avenue Q earning you know a little bit of money and I couldn't afford to look after them and all of a sudden overnight the income stopped and my dad was in his 50s and i was like it's potentially another 40 years and reality hit me very quickly that i had to think about how i was going to look after them because i i know what it's like to not be able to pay the rent it doesn't make you feel safe you feel very like you're living on the edge and i don't like that feeling i was going to give up the business just before i i wrote that letter to that casting director because i thought i can't keep going like this this is i'm not going to find safety for me or my mum and dad if I keep doing this for a living.

40:16So I was going to give it up. I think that's a great lesson for anyone listening that it is never too late. I mean, I'm talking about you like your geriatric. You were 30, but for an actor that is quite late to become a leading. Telling me, the peer group that I joined at that point, everyone I did a movie with, they already had success and they weren't my age or younger and they'd been doing it for a decade. I felt so late to the game that's why I never thought it was gonna last I was like you've missed the boat this is just one of those lucky moments you're gonna be in a movie and then you'll be back to you know working out what you're gonna do instead of the theater thing you know and it just didn't happen I kept going why me I don't get it I still don't get it I still don't get it I want my story to be an example this wasn't supposed to happen to me but when it did when that opportunity arose my god i took the reins and when wherever it's going to go i'm going to go with it the voice in my head could have stopped me could have told me i'm not good enough but the the positive one was a bit louder and i did it and i think that's how you should live life it's just you never know when it's taken away from you you never know when that opportunities by the way they don't keep coming in life i'd much prefer to get to 70 and go i took every opportunity instead of being at 70 going, I wish I'd done that because that might have changed something.