I remember once spending a Christmas with a friend’s family as our guests and as they arrived the electricity went off in the house. I had to phone the next door neighbour (who’d gone to his parents’ home with his wife and kids) and ask: “Please can I let myself in and cook my turkey in your oven?” In the spirit of things, he said: “Of course.”
My very first memory is of Marie biscuits. They were in a green packet, thin and like Rich Tea biscuits but with more writing. We’d always have butter on top. It’s a very Welsh thing, putting butter on your sweet Maries.
I was born on Easter Sunday and raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, by my mother, a housewife and sometime house cleaner, and my father, a bricklayer and great general builder, in a village [Aberbargoed] in the Rhymney Valley where the colliery had recently closed. The dining table was in the middle of the narrow galley kitchen, which led to our downstairs bathroom. We always ate there and Dad would start every meal with a prayer, based on what had been going on that day. Very personal, individual and sometimes sad.
On Saturday mornings, if it wasn’t torrential rain – and it needed to be torrential for us not to go – we were knocking on peoples’ doors, Witnessing. I hated it, if I’m honest, not least because I was bullied at school. There were times when we knocked on the homes of the parents of children who bullied me at school. You’d see kids sat in front of the box having their cereals, doing what I wanted to be doing on a Saturday morning – watching Why Don’t You…? with a bowl of Frosties.
I was a terribly fussy eater when I was a kid. All the things that kids generally like, such as baked beans, bacon and sausages, I didn’t like. And all vegetables. I’m an only child and I think that might have been the problem. When you haven’t any siblings you don’t have to worry that they’ll eat your food.
I had a real problem with food. I hated eggs and would vomit at the smell of carrots. But that all changed at 12 or 13 – I started to eat everything. That was also when kebab shops started trickling up the valleys. I remember when a great one arrived in Aberbargoed and kebabs became our treats.
I loved baking with my mother. I would pretend that we were on a cookery programme and the galley kitchen wall was the audience and cameras, and my mother would give me a wine glass with some lemonade in it, like Keith Floyd. I’d make her have all the ingredients of the cake measured out in separate bowls and she was my cooking assistant. I called her Doreen and she used to go with it. I still call Mum Doreen sometimes, when she gets on my nerves.
I moved out of home to Cardiff when I was 16 and employed a voice coach for my singing while working at a finance company. A slightly older woman there wanted to move to London and I did too, so at 17 I was sharing with her in London, while studying at the London Studio Centre. She was a terrible cook. I don’t think she ever ate in the house, but she certainly used to drink a lot.
I did musical theatre for eight years. In the West End on matinee days I would finish around 4.30pm, and go to a dumpling house on the edge of Chinatown and have a plate of sweet dumplings with vinegar, soy sauce and chilli and probably buy myself some jelly candy to get me through the evening performance. After the show we’d go to a bar and drink and then I would get a kebab to eat on the number 19 bus home.
I drink a lot of liquorice tea for the singing voice.
There can be immediate comfort in food. When I’ve been away filming, the very first thing I want when I arrive home is bread, frozen in the freezer, and baked beans from the cupboard. I really miss my baked beans on toast.
I think I’m pretty self-critical about my acting – because I want to do it better the next time – and the same is true in the kitchen. When I’m at home, with Mum especially, I’ll say lots of things like: “It’s better to get a chicken from the freezer that’s had a better life because it will taste better, Doreen.”
The best catering on a film I’ve acted in is a toss-up between Beauty and the Beast and Fast & Furious 6. Great chefs making great food: Mexican fare, Mediterranean steaks; one time a huge pig was roasted for lunch on a spit. It was pretty extraordinary. Back on [the film] Tamara Drewe, which was shot through October-November in lovely Dorset, we had a big and very nice celebration one night with fireworks and a big pig-roast out in the fields in the countryside.
I had to drink Charles Dance’s blood in Dracula Untold. It was actually a mixture of beetroot juice and cherry juice to give it that viscosity. So it was thick and gloopy, because I had to have congealing blood on my teeth, lips and chin. Drinking it was supposed to almost kill my character, and it was disgusting to taste.
Some of the best meals I’ve eaten have been at Ian McKellen’s house in New Zealand – where I lived for much of a year (making The Hobbit). Ian had a wonderful man called Steve who looked after him, drove him, helped him with his lines and this guy could cook the most incredible food. If you were invited over to Ian’s after shooting or on a weekend for dinner, you knew you were going to leave feeling very content indeed.
My favourite things
Food
There’s nothing quite like a kebab with the meat cooked incredibly well, from a good Turkish restaurant, with beautiful salads, garnishes and sauces. That’s lush, that.
Drink
I like an Aperol spritz and enjoy a good shiraz. And love a vermentino cinque terre – which I drank a lot of while making a movie last summer in Portofino.
Dish to make
I can make a full roast dinner, for 10. Three roast chickens – one with garlic, one with lemon and one with honey. With roast potatoes, honey-glazed parsnips and pears. On time and no problem.
Luke Evans’s debut album At Last is out now
