On July 26, 1999, I received in the mail this signed photo from Ioan and a letter from his mom, Gill Gruffudd. :) The letter reads as follows:
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you very much for writing to my son and for your kind words. I apologise for the delay in replying, but I have been waiting for Ioan to return home to sign photographs.
He has been working in Wales recently on an animated film called Gwr y Gwyrthiau(The Miracle Maker) The full-length feature offers a fresh look at the life of Jesus, with Ioan dubbing the the voice of Jesus in the Welsh language version. Also being filmed in Wales is Pavorotti in Dad's Room in which Ioan has a cameo role.
This summer, Ioan will be appearing on Channel 4 in Britain in one episode of a series called Love in the 21st Century which he filmed after completing Warriors(formerly called Peacekeepers) I believe that Warriors will be shown sometime in Britain in the autumn on a BBC channel. It chronicles the life of soldiers in the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia. Ioan spent six weeks filming in the Czech Republic until the end of March, when he returned to Britain to film the remainder of the story.
He is now 25 years old. He trained at RADA from September 1992 to June 1995 and started work on a play for BBC2 called Relative Strangers almost as soon as he left college. Later that year he played the part of Jeremy Poldark in The Stranger from the Sea, the latest in the Poldark saga shown on ITV, based on the novel by Winston Graham.
Since then, he has appeared as John Gray in Wilde, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in Titanic, Horatio Hornblower in the television series Hornblower and Pip in Great Expectations. He has also played in the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill in The New Decameron
.
A film he worked on in Wales last year was released in Britain on April 30th. It's called Solomon and Gaenor and was filmed in a Welsh version as well as English, with his family in the film speaking Yiddish in both versions. It tells the story of illict love between a Welsh girl and a Jewish boy, against the backdrop of racial tension and industrial unrest in the Welsh valleys of 1911. It carries a 15 certificate.
I enclose a signed photograph and wish you the very best for the future.
Sincerely,
Gill Gruffudd (Mrs)
This postscript was handwritten on the bottom:
Ioan has a Welsh accent in "Titanic."
(This was in response to my question as to what film he's used his native accent in. Being an American, I can't distinguish between English and Welsh, much to my embarressment!)
