Flying high

With high-profile roles in Marvel's Hawkeye series and Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon, and taking over as The Emcee in the West End's revival of Cabaret, Fra Fee tells Attitude's Will Stroude how he's keeping his feet on the ground

- Will Stroude

"This is my coming out tattoo,” smiles Fra Fee, drawing up his shirt sleeve to show me one of many intriguingly intricate inkings that adorn his arms and torso as we take a seat outside the east London studio where he’s just shot his first Attitude fashion editorial. Before me is a striking design depicting a hummingbird “which represents freedom and spreading one’s wings” alongside three flowers — one for each of Fra’s sisters, the first people he came out to — and a line from a Tennessee Williams poem the actor studied as a closeted gay teenager in Northern Ireland at the turn of the millennium that reads “There will be pity for the wild.”

“It just resonated with me so much,” explains Fra in a quietly commanding Irish lilt, floppy hair and boyish good looks belying his 35 years as we conduct his first major gay press interview in a rare window of British sunshine. “Tennessee Williams is a famously gay writer who was so victimised as a result and really struggled to live comfortably in his own skin in the world that he grew up in. It really seemed to reflect what was happening in my life in Ireland at the time.

“I got the tattoo years after coming out and all that, but I wanted to remind myself of that moment, and how things have changed for me…”

Changed they certainly have. Since graduating from the University of Manchester and the Royal Academy of Music more than a decade ago, Fra has carved out an enviable stage career, with turns in Les Misérables (shortly followed by a role in Tom Hooper’s Oscar-winning big screen adaptation) and