Quotes from Luke Evans

I did use my own accent in a play once. It's a very freeing, liberating experience. Actors are often asked to adopt a different accent, and sometimes a different voice, so when that's taken away and you don't have to think about it, that's a lovely thing.

Not everybody's a great singer, but people can get better at singing. There's great singing teachers out there. It's a muscle, you just have to train it.

If you look weird, you can blame the role, you know? So no one's going to tell me I'm having a mid-life crisis.

When I left school, I got a job in a shoe shop and I used to save 15 quid a week and pay for my own singing and acting lessons.

I don't carry off 'quirky.'

I've got two cows licks; when I was a kid, all the boys in school used to have curtains, and my hair never used to do that, ever! I always used to try, and I always looked like the geek.

You don't want to play the same roles or do the same genre.

I've played quite a few good guys.

I was often looked at as a leper by kids at school because I was a Jehovah's Witness. They didn't like it - you were 'weird'. And on Saturday mornings, you'd be knocking at their doors. I remember standing there with my mum and dad, thinking, 'Oh my God, I know whose door this is, and I'll have to see them on Monday.' It was terrible.

In the future, I would like to do more films with contemporary themes. Perhaps comedy, which is something I have done in theater but not in cinema.

I love to sit down on a beanbag at the end of the day and watch my fish. It's therapeutic, isn't it? They're alive, and I'm keeping them alive. I like the responsibility.

The percentage of people that go to drama college in the U.K. is probably just like anywhere in the world. It's a very hard business to work in. They say that, at any one time, there's only 5% of actors in the world that are actually working and getting paid, which is a shocking percentage, really.

Most of the time, you do films and they can be big films, but you are rarely aware of the fan base that comes with it.

You can read 50 great things about yourself, but the one bad thing will be what you remember most.

I'm this dude that can play a farmhand and a handyman and sometimes a Greek god.

The gym is somewhere you can go to just forget for an hour what you do for a living, what you are doing on a daily basis. You just turn up and get on with it.

My mother did like to make clothes, and in I think the worst picture I've ever seen of myself - I must have been eight or nine - she'd dressed me in a matching t-shirt and Bermuda shorts ensemble which I think looked like somebody had thrown up all over it. I was so glad when that sewing machine stopped working, I have to say.

I don't think you should spend that much time in the gym. Don't sit around between sets too long. If you want to burn some calories, keep the sets tight. Give yourself 30 seconds to a minute between each set. Supersetting is brilliant.

It's hard work just being on set 14 hours a day.

Everybody knew me as a gay man, and in my life in London, I never tried to hide.

There are certain tuxes you can get away with a black tie, but with others, you'd be dishonoring the workmanship if you didn't wear a full bow tie.

I research the role, and if it's a literary character, I read the book, and if it's an historical figure, I research documents and biographies. If it's a fictional character, I work off the script.

Being involved in 'The Hobbit' has been a huge boost for me. It's really put me on the map and helped me be taken more seriously as an actor.

In all honesty, I should have given up this acting lark years ago.