Hunky Hornblower heart-throb Ioan Gruffudd on his rocky road back to prime-time ITV drama Liar — as he admits being out of work for two years pushed him to the brink of depression

IT’S hard to believe that for two years, hunky Ioan Gruffudd sat by the phone, waiting for a job offer to come through.
Having moved to Hollywood on the crest of a wave, the Welsh actor best known for playing historic Horatio Hornblower had hit stormy seas.
Too old for the roles he used to be offered, and with a string of flops to his name, he sank into the depths of despair.
“I didn’t work for more than two years,” he said. “I sat on the couch and waited for work to come in. I got depressed, went into the abyss.”
At the same time, he and his actress wife Alice Evans were struggling to have the family they longed for.
Now, finally, his fortunes are on the up again, starring opposite Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt in ITV’s psychological drama Liar, which started on Monday.
Penned by writers-of-the-moment Jack and Harry Williams, who also created The Missing, it tells the story of an alleged date rape, without the viewer knowing whether the accuser or accused is telling the truth.
Monday’s opener, which notched up 4.9million viewers, provided plenty of intrigue and the opportunity for the nation’s women to drool over one of our sexiest home-grown stars.
Social media was flooded with admiration for the dishy actor, who was once tipped to play James Bond and hailed as one of the “30 most interesting people in the world” by Time magazine.
Ioan said: “It was one of the best scripts I have read in a long, long time. There has only been three times in my career where I’ve read something and thought, ‘I have to play this part’, and this was one of them.”
And having fallen out of favour for so long, 43-year-old Ioan now couldn’t be happier.
He explained: “I know what it’s like when the phone doesn’t ring. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world.
“I’m still hungry for success. I’m grateful for all the experiences, even the negative ones.”
Born in Llwydcoed, in the South Wales valleys, entertainment was in Ioan’s blood.
His parents, Peter and Gillian, were both teachers but his grandparents ran an amateur dramatics group in Cardiff, where Ioan grew up.
At 13, the bilingual teen landed a part in Welsh soap Pobol y Cwm, and following school he headed to London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where his contemporaries included Ripper Street actor Matthew Macfadyen.
Agents urged him to change what they viewed as an unpronounceable name (it’s Yo-anne Griffith, by the way) to an English one, but the patriotic boyo refused.
But if he thought the agents were ruthless, his first job after graduating — playing Poldark’s son in a 1996 adaptation — made him realise just how tough the acting world could be.
He recalled: “I thought, ‘This is it, I’m being paid a fortune, job done’.”
It turned out to be a flop.
Then followed a bit-part in the movie Wilde and a short appearance as Fifth Officer Lowe in blockbuster Titanic, which proved a valuable but harrowing experience under “possessed” director James Cameron.
He said: “I was crying in the make-up chair every night for a week.
“Not because I’d been shouted at, but because of the atmosphere. I thought, ‘I’ve landed in hell here’.”
But in 1998, his ship quite literally came in with ITV’s Napoleonic film series Hornblower.
His portrayal as the lead, all frilly shirts and breeches, set female viewers’ pulses racing in much the same way Ross Poldark does today.
Describing it as “insanely popular”, Ioan said: “I get recognised for this more than anything all over the world.” In the US, it won an Emmy award for Outstanding Miniseries and, crucially, brought him to attention there.
He starred in TV movie Warriors in 1999 then, in 2005, after playing Lancelot in King Arthur alongside Clive Owen, Ioan landed the dream role of Mr Fantastic in Marvel’s Fantastic Four movie.
A sequel two years later would prove to be his last blockbuster, though.
While his best friend and fellow Taff Matthew Rhys was thriving in America, earning plaudits in the hit series Brothers & Sisters and The Americans, Ioan’s career hit the buffers.
At the same time he wife Alice, who he met on set on 102 Dalmatians, were struggling to conceive.
Alice later regretted the decision to delay trying for a family until she was 37, describing it as “very late”.
Now 46, she said: “The whole of my 38th year was spent reading studies about fertility, taking my morning temperature, planning ovulation graphs, standing on my head after sex and fastidiously avoiding tea, coffee, alcohol, pineapple pizza and anything else I’d read might possibly prevent pregnancy.”
They considered adoption in America but that would prove more costly and unpredictable than IVF, so they opted for the latter despite knowing there was only a slim chance of success.
Miraculously, the first cycle worked, and in 2009 they were blessed with daughter Ella Betsi.
Still there was turmoil to come.
A desperately-wanted sibling would prove even more difficult. It was only after eight gruelling rounds of IVF that Elsie Marigold came along in September 2013.
During that time, Ioan’s latest TV venture, Ringer, with Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar, was canned after one series.
In a brutally honest interview in January 2014, he said: “I’m auditioning for dozens of parts at the moment but I’m not getting them.
“I can’t play someone who’s 30 any more, maybe 35 at a push.
“My confidence has really taken a knock and the worst thing you can do when you’re feeling like that is go to one of these auditions.
“You really don’t want to come across as desperate so I’ve been working with a psychologist to help me overcome that.”
A month later, in what was believed to be his much-needed comeback, Ioan landed the lead in US medical drama Forever, about an immortal medical examiner.
But that too, was dropped after just one series, leaving him so devastated he asked Alice to break the news on Twitter.
He later wrote on his own Instagram: “Show business is like that. Hell, life is like that. You ride to the top of the wave and then you come crashing down again.”
But he added, he was “overcome by a sense of gratitude,” after reading thousands of messages of support following Alice’s Tweet.
His fans continue to buoy him up and he loves being asked for selfies with them. He said: “It makes you feel on top of the world, it can literally change your day.”
It was a radical overhaul of his life that brought about a career turnaround. Out went his old management team and in came yoga, meditation and positive thinking. He said: “You visualise yourself as a winner. It makes you feel positive.”
He also cut down on booze, joking: “I’ve gone a bit Hollywood.”
But his plan worked.
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He scored a hit with disaster epic San Andreas, which also starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and became the highest-grossing Warner Bros film of 2015.
As well as Liar, he has filmed The Professor and the Madman, about Sir James Murray — played by Mel Gibson — and the creation of the first Oxford
English Dictionary. And next year we’ll see him as the lead in Harrow, a ten-part crime drama in which he plays an unorthodox forensic pathologist.
Now, far from resigning himself to the scrapheap, Ioan is positively embracing growing older.
He said: “I’ve looked at myself on screen and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what I look like, I’m not 26 any more’.”
“But it’s exciting because there are all sorts of parts I’d never have been considered for in the past because I was too young and looked too much like a leading man.
“Now I’ve got a bit of weathering, I’ve put on a bit more weight, I can play a character, a real person.”
We’re sure his fans will agree that Ioan is only getting better with age.