Ioan IS Hornblower

Unless C.S. Forester himself rises from the grave and says while pointing to another actor, "THIS is Hornblower," you will nevah get me to believe that there is someone better suited to the role than Ioan Gruffudd.  Here is, perhaps, the most inspired casting of a book-turned-movie character ever.  The man is simply a dead-ringer for Horatio.  Don't believe me...?

I give you the evidence:

So he looked at attention at the approaching figure.  It was that of a skinny young man only just leaving boyhood behind, something above middle height, with feet whose adolescent proportions to his size were accentuated by the thinness of his legs and his big half-boots.  His gawkiness called attention to his hands and elbows.

-Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

Set in the white face were a pair of dark eyes...

-Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

Hornblower turned and walked down the row; behind his back one hand was twisting impatiently within the other; he came back and turned again, walking jerkily down the row--he seemed incapable of standing still...

-Lieutenant Hornblower (If you're wondering why I included this description, you've obviously never seen how fidgety Ioan is during his interviews...)

The deck beams above were six feet clear over the carpet and Pellew had grown so used to this that he advanced to shake hands with no stoop at all in contrast to Hornblower, who instinctively crouched with his five foot eleven.

-Hornblower and the Hotspur (Anyone care to venture a guess as to Mr. Gruffudd's height?)

The face he regarded in the glass was neither handsome nor ugly, neither old nor young.  There was a pair of melancholy brown eyes, a forehead sufficiently high, a nose sufficiently straight; a good mouth set with all the firmness acquired during twenty years at sea.  The tousled curly brown hair was just beginning to recede and leave the forehead a little higher still, which was a source of irritation to Captain Hornblower...He was slender and well-muscled; quite a prepossessing figure...

-Beat to Quarters

And as regards his actual appearance, he obviously must have the indefinable good looks that a woman would notice and yet which he himself would underestimate, and along with those good looks would go good hands, beautiful hands, perhaps; hands that are often associated with the temperament I had in mind, and, once again, Hornblower would not be aware of their charm.

-C.S. Forester in The Hornblower Companion