Ioan Gruffudd (HH1)

Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced yo-IN griffiths) stood proudly aloft the topsail yardarm of a spectacular frigate sailing in the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal, and he felt on top of the world.

It was a boy's own adventure dream come true for the twenty-four-year-old actor when he landed the coveted leading role of C.S. Forester's seafaring hero, Horatio Hornblower.

As a child Gruffudd reveled in playing swashbuckling games with his brother in the garden of their Cardiff, Wales, home, improvising with a sticks for swords.

But as midshipman Hornblower, Gruffudd was able to indulge in all those daredevil antics for real.

"I've always wanted to dress up in a uniform like Hornblower's and wield a sword. I remember playing those adventure games in the garden with my brother when we would create a world using a stick for a sword and an oar as a gun. But in Hornblower I got to play the games for real, on board a real ship and with real weapons," says Gruffudd.

"One of the pinnacles of the whole shoot was standing on top of the foremast topsail yardarm with Jamie Bamber, who plays Midshipman Kennedy, in the middle of the Atlantic while a helicopter circled us, filming us up there. That was tremendous. I felt like Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic.

"It has been a boy's own dream filming Hornblower with moments like that, and jumping on a horse, firing a pistol, saving a girl, and climbing up the mast. When we were filming a shipwreck scene in the big tank at Pinewood Studios, the wind and wave machines were going and the rain was lashing. It did feel like the real thing."

The young actor was determined not to miss out on a moment of the action, and insisted on doing all the stunts himself. That meant plunging into the icy depths of the Black Sea, several times, for a scene where Hornblower inspects a hole in the side of a ship which threatens to sink it.

"I am a good swimmer, and I'm not scared of water. So I wanted to do the scenes where Hornblower dives overboard," says Gruffudd. "But it did leave me with a sore ear, and a slight sea-washing noise. Climbing the rigging was no problem, and riding a horse was fine. I am not a good horseman, but then neither is the character, so it looked natural.

"I am quite sporty, unlike my character, who is shy and gangly and not a naturally physical person."

Hornblower is Gruffudd's first leading role, coming just three years after leaving the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The Cardiff-born actor, whose literary background was steeped in Welsh heroes, admits he had not read C.S. Forester's classic stories. But on landing the role he rapidly read all the books.

"I was so lucky to have been offered the lead in a big series like this. Working on the production has been a big learning curve for me. From the technical aspect, as an actor I have grown up a lot over the last twelve months, but I've also grown up emotionally as a person, being surrounded by people who have been in the business for a long time.

"There are aspects of me which are very close to the character. But things like the accent, I let go at the end of the day, along with his vulnerability and coyness," says Gruffudd, who plays Hornblower without a trace of his native Welsh accent.

Long hours spent filming on rough seas caused Gruffudd to suffer a little seasickness. But he was not nearly as ill as his character, who was famous for being the midshipman who was sick before his ship had left Portsmouth. " I was not physically sick, it was more motion sickness really. At the end of the day I would step in the shower and still feel as if I was on board ship," he admits.

But there were some home comforts. Gruffudd's mother visited him on the set of the Grand Turk, with a batch of Welsh cakes for everyone. And he celebrated his twenty-forth birthday aboard the Baltic trader the Julia, with a birthday cake from the cast and crew.

There was just one thing Gruffudd hated about playing Hornblower--the hair extensions he had to wear to give him the pigtail common to midshipmen of the period. "They were so annoying to have, I couldn't wait for them to be cut off at the end of the shoot."

Gruffudd's parents are teachers--his father is the headmaster of a Welsh comprehensive school and his mother teaches Welsh as a second language. He has a younger brother, Alun, and younger sister, Siwan.

Gruffudd had dreams of playing rugby for Wales, or becoming an airline pilot. But he became gripped by acting after landing a role in a Welsh language film when he was eleven. Two years later he won a role in a Welsh BBC soap opera, Pobblycom [sic] (People of the Valley), a part which lasted for seven years.

"Like many Welsh boys my dream was to play rugby for my country. But hopefully through acting I can represent my country on an international stage, and fly the flag that way. I am very proud of my country, and Welsh is my first language" says Gruffudd.

Gruffudd left his home in Cardiff to take up a place at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London when he was eighteen. Just days after finishing his course he was on a train back to Cardiff for a role in a BBC television drama, A Relative Stranger. He then landed a substantial role in another television drama, Poldark."

Gruffudd had his first taste of professional theatre at London's Gate Theatre, before winning parts in two major feature films--Titanic and Wilde. In Titanic Gruffudd played Fifth Officer Lowe, the young officer who rescued survivors from the stricken ship. In Wilde he played John Gray, one of Oscar Wilde's earlier lovers, on whom Wilde based his book A Picture of Dorian Gray.

C.S Forester's naval hero was another contrasting role. "Hornblower is extremely sensitive, compassionate, trustworthy, and loyal. He is a self-conscious, but courageous and very determined character. He has to grow up quickly in the navy, and becomes hardened by the rules and the life," Gruffudd explains.

But when he meets his first love--the beautiful Mariette, played by Estelle Skornik, he "can't put his finger on his emotions and he's gauche and naïve."

Gruffudd played his first romantic lead in a film he made during his break between filming Hornblower in the Ukraine and Portugal.

He explains: "It is a love story, set in 1910 in a mining community in the Welsh Valleys, about a forbidden love affair between a young Jewish boy and a Welsh Christian girl.

"It was nice to play a romantic lead. The character was so different to Hornblower, the character is emotional and open. I didn't have to be restrained," says Gruffudd.

After filming was completed on Horatio Hornblower Gruffudd went straight onto playing Pip in Tony Marchant's television adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Currently Gruffudd is in Prague working on the British film Peacemakers.