Olly Alexander has opened up about life in the spotlight.
During a revealing interview with The Guardian over the weekend, the Years & Years frontman and LGBTQ activist said he finds it harder to meet other gay guys in clubs now that he doesn’t have the benefit of anonymity.
“I’m having much less sex than I did in my early 20s, for sure,” he said.
Olly also spoke about his experiences with gay hook-up app Grindr, explaining that it “didn’t go very well” as most of the people he messaged wouldn’t believe that he was really who he said he was.
“The last few months I’ve been wondering, ‘Will I just be alone, for ever? And would I be OK with that?’ I want to be OK with that,” he mused.
Related: Years and Years’ new single is about Olly Alexander’s relationship with a straight man
While he may not be as sexually active now, Olly recalled that he was having “lots of sex” when he first moved to London, especially when he was cast in theatre production Peter And Alice alongside Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw in 2012.
“I figured out that I could pull, basically. It wasn’t has hard as I thought it was going to be,” he explained.
“I realised that, actually, everyone’s pretty horny, pretty desperate at times, and all you needed to do was maintain eye contact and be confident and that was kind of it.”
It’s not the first time he’s spoken about his experiences with Grindr, as he recently told GQ about the time he downloaded the app following the break up of a relationship.
“When I was newly single, I downloaded Grindr because I’d been in relationships or I’d been in the band,” Olly said.
“I couldn’t have Grindr, but then I was like, ‘Wait, but why the fuck can’t I have Grindr? I want to have this experience.’ You know? So I downloaded it and I was on it, and then it was just weird because people would think I was catfishing myself, which was kind of a head fuck.”
He added: “Grindr has some great things about it, but it also has a lot of negatives, and it’s just very hard to trust anybody. It just feels like this meat market of dick pics and sex positions. ‘Are you a top or bottom?’
“It does kind of depress me a bit, even though I love to hook up as much as the next guy. It’s good for that, but people would think I was catfishing myself, or they’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m such a big fan,’ and that’s kind of a turnoff, so it didn’t go super well for me.”
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