Luke Evans as Frank-N-Furter: What His Chart Says About Rocky Horror
Luke Evans opened on Broadway as Frank-N-Furter on April 23, 2026, with reviews hitting inside 48 hours. The Welsh actor's chart — Libra rising with Pluto in the 1st, Venus square Neptune, and a Saturn-Neptune transit on his natal Mars — makes clear why the casting landed now, and why his natal setup has been pointing at this role for decades.
By Sera Vane·April 24, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
Luke Evans opened on Broadway as Dr. Frank-N-Furter on April 23, 2026 — fishnets, corset, diamond-sharp baritone, and the entire Richard O'Brien canon of sweet-transvestite iconography on his shoulders. Reviews from Variety, Deadline, Time Out, and the New York Theatre Guide
landed inside 48 hours, and they broke in different directions. Some saw a star finally meeting the role he was born for. Others saw a production more controlled than feral. Either way, the casting question is settled. His birth chart makes it easy to see why Evans was the name that kept coming up.
Luke Evans — Chart Snapshot
Born
April 15, 1979, 5:55 PM, Pontypool, Wales
Sun
Aries 25°07' (7th house)
Moon
Sagittarius 3°07' (3rd house)
Rising
Libra 2°47'
Mars
Aries 6°43' (7th house, on the Descendant)
Pluto
Libra 17°38' (1st house)
Mercury / Venus
Pisces (6th house), Venus square Neptune under 1°
Current transit
Saturn and Neptune in Aries both conjunct natal Mars
Birth-time source
Native's public statement (Rodden A)
What's Happening
The Rocky Horror Show — Richard O'Brien's 1973 rock musical about a transgressive alien scientist seducing a young couple on a rainy night — is back on Broadway in a new Roundabout Theatre Company revival directed by Sam Pinkleton. The production began performances March 26 and officially opened April 23, 2026, with an extension already running through July 19. Evans is playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the show's gender-fluid, openly predatory creator of the "perfect man." The part was made iconic by Tim Curry in 1973 and again in the 1975 film. Stepping into it is not a subtle move. Every Frank-N-Furter has to earn the room back from Curry's ghost, and Evans — a classically trained baritone who came up through London's West End in shows like Rent and Taboo before Hollywood — is taking a swing at one of theater's most recognizable silhouettes.
The reviews have split. <a href="https://variety.com/2026/legit/reviews/rocky-horror-show-broadway-review-revival-lacks-shock-fun-luke-evans-1236728429/">Variety</a> called the revival "more controlled experiment than midnight mayhem," while the New York Theatre Guide said Evans was "born for the role" and Time Out called the whole thing "deliciously warped and timely." Audience response on Show-Score is running around 90 percent approval, with Evans's performance cited as the engine. Divided critics, strong crowd — that specific pattern is exactly what you'd expect from the placements below.
An Aries Sun in the Seventh House
Evans was born with the Sun in Aries at 25°07', and because his rising sign — the vibe you project before you speak, the image that lands on the door — is Libra at 2°47', that Aries Sun ends up in the 7th house, the house of the other person, the audience, the partner across the footlights. So the first tension in the chart lives right at the surface: a Libran face with an Aries engine. Polish on the outside, ignition underneath.
Aries in the 7th is a specific flavor of performer. The sign that is supposed to be all "me, first, now" — ruled by Mars, blunt, combative — gets routed through the house that handles everybody who isn't you. The fire only switches on when there's a partner in the scene. Plenty of leading actors are solo performers holding a room. This chart doesn't work that way. It needs a scene partner, a foil, an audience locking eyes. Frank-N-Furter is almost comically suited to that: the character exists only through interactions with Brad, Janet, and the crowd he breaks the fourth wall to flirt with. Aries in the 7th has a partner, or it has nothing to do.
Mars — the ruler of Aries, and therefore the chart's drive planet — is also in Aries, at 6°43', sitting practically on top of the Descendant, which is the cusp of that same 7th house. In astrological shorthand, that's a performer whose drive is aimed like a headlight at whoever's on the other side of the line. Combine Aries Sun and Aries Mars in the same house, and you get someone who doesn't just want to play scenes. He wants to attack them, devour them, be changed by them. Frank-N-Furter demands exactly that kind of Mars-forward performer, willing to be the aggressor on a stage.
Libra Rising, Pluto Right Behind It
Libra rising is the aesthetic sign at the door. It arrives looking like it belongs on a poster. That alone explains a chunk of Evans's casting history — the tall, symmetrical elegance that kept directors putting him in The Hobbit, Dracula Untold, Beauty and the Beast, and Nine Perfect Strangers. Libra is the sign that knows how light hits a jawline. You don't accidentally get this rising sign on a leading man's resume.
But right there in the first house — the house of self, of how you arrive in a room — sits Pluto at Libra 17°38'. Pluto is the planet of power, taboo, and what you do with your shadow. In the 1st, it means the shadow comes in with the entrance. You don't meet this person without meeting the intensity. There's a darkness right behind the smile and a refusal to perform warmth that isn't there. You see this in the chameleon choices of actors like Tilda Swinton, whose Scorpio-Neptune stellium drives a comparable other-worldly screen presence — the sense that something unsettling is always behind the beauty. Evans's version is more operatic, but the principle is the same: polish as container for something darker.
Frank-N-Furter only works if the actor can hold both at once. You need the glam — the corset, the heels, the camp — and you need the menace. Pluto rising behind Libra rising is that exact recipe. The reviewer who describes an Evans performance as magnetic but uneasy to watch isn't imagining it. That's the chart.
Venus Square Neptune: The Glamour Engine
In the 6th house — the house of daily craft and service, where the actual work of being a working actor lives — Evans carries Mercury at Pisces 28°41' and Venus at Pisces 21°01'. Pisces is the sign of dissolution, fantasy, music, and disappearance into a character. Two planets there, in the craft house, is basically a built-in thespian. This is the placement of the operatic tenor, the performer who studies vocal coaching for years, the actor whose instrument is finished and whose job is to live inside somebody else's skin.
The twist is a square from Venus to Neptune at less than one degree orb. A square is the friction aspect — the 90-degree angle where two planets grind against each other instead of playing nice. Venus is glamour, aesthetic, attraction. Neptune is illusion, fantasy, theater, gender fog, the veil. When they're locked this tight in a hard angle, you get a performer for whom glamour isn't decorative — it is the entire mechanism. The beauty is always a costume. The seduction is always partly a character. And the line between Luke Evans the person and Luke Evans in a silk robe singing "Sweet Transvestite" gets delightfully blurry, because that's the playing field he's most natural on.
This, more than anything else in the chart, is the Frank-N-Furter signature. The character's entire point is that glamour and menace and tenderness and appetite are not separable in him. You can't isolate the seductive Frank-N-Furter from the predatory one from the heartbroken one — they all come out of the same fishnet-covered body. Venus square Neptune wrote that character before O'Brien did.
The Transit Making This the Moment
Evans could have been cast in Rocky Horror ten years ago. He wasn't. The timing matters, because the sky right now is activating the exact part of his chart that Frank-N-Furter needs. In late April 2026, transit Saturn is at Aries 8°27' and transit Neptune is at Aries 3°03'. His natal Mars sits at Aries 6°43', right between them. Both slow-moving planets are conjunct his Mars — Saturn inside two degrees, Neptune inside four. A conjunction is when two points in the sky stack on top of each other, blending their energies into whichever house and sign they share. His Mars is getting both at once.
Saturn conjunct Mars is the discipline transit. It tends to show up as a long, demanding stretch where your body and your drive get stress-tested. Actors often get cast in technically punishing roles under this sky — vocal showpieces, physical-theater parts, eight-shows-a-week runs. Neptune conjunct Mars is the dissolution transit. It blurs your usual sense of self and asks you to channel something that isn't quite you. Playing a character who performs gender, power, and desire simultaneously, while wearing a costume that erases every visual cue of your ordinary identity, is exactly the kind of work Neptune-on-Mars tends to call into a life.
Getting both at once is rare. The Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries is a once-every-36-years event, and it's rolling across his Mars during the exact Broadway window. That isn't a coincidence you can explain with calendar planning — it's the chart syncing with the casting. The same fire-sign stellium is currently driving a run of Aries-Sun stage returns; Jim Parsons's turn in <a href="/blog/jim-parsons-birth-chart-titanique-broadway-2026">Titanique</a> is another Broadway moment lining up against the same transit. The sky has a type this season.
What This Moment Asks of Him
Saturn transits don't give you the thing — they make you earn it. The Saturn-conjunct-Mars stretch of 2026 is the part where Evans has to actually do the vocals, hit the choreography, survive the press cycle, and let the reviews land where they land. Neptune on Mars can make the process feel dream-like — loose, porous, disorienting — but Saturn is there as the structural spine that keeps it from dissolving into mush. If the work connects, this is a career-redefining transit. If it doesn't, it's a humbling one. Neither outcome is guaranteed by the chart, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
What the chart does promise is that the role is a genuine fit, not a stunt. Pluto in the 1st was always going to route Evans toward characters who carry a shadow. Venus square Neptune in the craft house was always going to push him toward roles where glamour and unease are the same instrument. Aries Sun and Mars on the 7th-house line were always going to reward the parts that let him play across a footlight at an audience that flirts back. Frank-N-Furter is just the clearest, campiest, most unmistakable version of every one of those placements lining up at once. The Saturn-Neptune transit is the sky finally handing him the role his natal setup has been waiting for.
There's also a softer overlay worth naming. During the opening-week window, transit Venus in early Gemini is opposite his natal Moon in Sagittarius at 3°07' within about two degrees — a short but sweet aspect that tends to show up as a surge of emotional reception, the thing you feel when a crowd is genuinely with you. A Sagittarius Moon is already a naturally theatrical placement: a Sagittarius Moon performer tends to play to the back row, tell a story out loud, need an audience's breath in the room. Opposition Venus lights that up. For a few nights in late April 2026, he is exactly where the Moon wants to be.
Whether this revival is canonized or carefully critiqued, Evans isn't playing Frank-N-Furter by accident. Every major placement in his chart points at this character, and the biggest slow transit in a generation is rolling across the exact degree in his chart that runs his drive. If you want a textbook case of the Mars-Saturn-in-Aries window doing its job, this is one.
When was Luke Evans born, and what sign is he?
Luke Evans was born on April 15, 1979, in Pontypool, Wales. He's an Aries Sun at 25 degrees, with a Sagittarius Moon and Libra rising. His documented birth time of 5:55 PM comes from his own public statement, which makes it reliable enough to read his rising sign and house placements with confidence.
Why is Luke Evans playing Frank-N-Furter in 2026?
Evans is headlining the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show, directed by Sam Pinkleton. Previews began March 26, 2026, and the show officially opened on April 23, 2026. The run has already extended through July 19, which is unusual this early in a revival's life.
What does Luke Evans's chart say about his acting style?
A Pisces Venus and Mercury in the sixth house is the placement of the craft performer — the actor who studies the instrument. A tight Venus-Neptune square adds a glamour-and-illusion signature that tends to show up in roles where beauty and menace are hard to separate, which is exactly the Frank-N-Furter brief.
What transit is Luke Evans under right now?
Saturn and Neptune are both moving through Aries and both conjunct his natal Mars at Aries 6 degrees. Saturn adds discipline and testing; Neptune dissolves the ordinary sense of self. The combination is rare — about once every 36 years — and it tends to produce genuinely transformative work, or genuinely humbling stretches.
Is Luke Evans's birth time reliable for reading his chart?
His birth time of 5:55 PM in Pontypool is documented as a native self-statement Evans made publicly in 2013, archived by Astro-Databank. That source grade supports reliable interpretation of the rising sign, house cusps, and angle-based transits — the elements that would otherwise require an official birth certificate to confirm.
