In his new film ‘Our Son’, the Welsh star of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Hobbit’ plays one half of a gay couple enduring a messy split. He speaks to Adam White about the importance of depicting gay divorce, leaving small-town Aberbargoed at 16, and why he’s launched a ‘bold and sexy’ lifestyle brand

Luke Evans would like to clarify something, as I’ve made the mistake of calling him hench. “Firstly, Dwayne Johnson is hench,” the actor says, cheerfully yet firmly, in his mellifluous Welsh growl. “Chris Hemsworth is hench. Put them next to me and I look like a matchstick.”

The decidedly un-hench Evans may not feel particularly stacked in the upper-arm department, but he’s certainly played a lot of muscly men. In the live-action Beauty and the Beast he was Gaston, a throbbing vein of musical machismo. He was a swashbuckling archer in the Hobbit trilogy, the Greek god Apollo in Clash of the Titans, and a surprisingly tender Zeus in the action thriller Immortals. He’s even been a villain in a Fast & Furious movie, that practically annual convention of the square-jawed and bountifully burly.

Finally, there’s Evans’s Instagram, which suggests he leads a blissful, sun-kissed life of topless reclining and international adventure. The imagery for his new lifestyle brand BDXY follows suit, showcasing yachts, supermodels and immaculate tailoring. Maybe “hench” isn’t the right word. Maybe it should just be “envy-inducing”.

Read the full interview at The Independent