Ioan Gruffudd
Headline:
The boyo'd done good
Synopsis:
Ioan Gruffudd is set to charm Hollywood, playing Tony Blair in Oliver Stone’s new film, W. He talks to Chrissy Iley about girls, good times and God.
He seems to have been born without the ability to feel embarrassed about himself. He speaks without any kind of filtering process, from his core. He gives you wincing minutiae. Ioan Gruffudd doesn’t tell me what he thinks I want to hear. He doesn’t manipulate. He doesn’t even expect me to have watched his performance of Tony Blair in Oliver Stone’s W. He hasn’t seen it himself, the process in the cutting room having been so long and fractious. He doesn’t need a film to plug to allow an interview like most Hollywood actors.
He wanted to make sure we meet before I left Los Angeles. So here we are on the patio of the Four Seasons, garden umbrellas beating off the baking sun. Gruffudd is wearing dark jeans and a washed-in grey T-shirt. It clings and hangs in all the right places. His jaw is chiselled, his hair is dark-brown curls. Around his neck a silver chain on which hangs a gold wedding ring. He is extremely polite; to me, to the waiters, probably to everybody.
He has lived in LA since 2003 and he unashamedly loves it. “Which is an easy thing to admit in America because that’s the way they are brought up, to be successful and ambitious. It’s the American way. The British are incredibly ambitious and driven, but you’re not allowed to admit it. Such horrible false modesty drove me mad, actually. I don’t miss London at all.”
- Publish date:
- 2 November 2008
- Author:
- Chrissy Iley
- Source:
- Sunday Times Magazine
- Media:
