Ioan Gruffudd and Alice Evans Expecting First Child
 PA Photos/Landov |
This is going to be some international family! Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd and his wife, English actress Alice Evans, are expecting a baby, his rep confirms to PEOPLE.
This will be the first child for the couple, who currently live in Los Angeles. The Fantastic Four actor, 35, met Alice, 37, while filming 2002’s 102 Dalmations and they wed in the fall of 2007.
Ioan, who gained fame across the pond starring as Horatio Hornblower in Hornblower – the British made-for-TV films based on C.S. Forester’s novels — has also appeared in 2004’s King Arthur and 2006’s Amazing Grace, and played former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Oliver Stone’s W. last year. He next appears with Julia Roberts in Fireflies in the Garden, due out in June.
Source: PEOPLE
– Alexis Chiu
- Posted on Apr 20, 09 at 6:30PM
- Permalink
- 17 Comments
April 20th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
What wonderful news! It was pretty obvious from the pictures of them this weekend. There was a super sweet one of Alice holding her very visible bump while Ioan looked happy and excited.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
While I’m not Alice’s biggest fan (that whole ioanonline mess)I love Ioan and wish them both all the best! The baby will be adorable, there’s no doubt about that!
April 20th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I thought he was gay lol. Congrats to them!
April 20th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I remember him from Titanic!! Congrats!
April 20th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Yeah, I think Alice has burned enough online bridges at this point that even a cute little baby won’t get much traction. I just can’t get excited about this couple at all — she’s [insert well-documented transgression], and he’s just sounded so much less genuine as the years go on (his acting’s not improved like I thought it would, either).
Funny, I never thought that out of him, Matthew Rhys and Jamie Bamber, Ioan would be the one I end up not giving a toss about ten years later.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:29 am
what was the online mess Alice was involved in?
April 21st, 2009 at 8:52 am
From what I understand, people on Ioan Gruffudd’s official website were insulting Alice. She was understandably upset and he decided to stop funding the site in response, resulting in it getting shut down. And of course she got the blame, rather than him or the people in the forums.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:21 am
Can anyone provide a link to the photos of them over the weekend? I’d love to see her bump!
April 21st, 2009 at 10:45 am
Oh I really enjoyed the Horatio Hornblower series! Congrats to Ioan and Alice!
April 21st, 2009 at 11:44 am
The insults were done in the site forum by fans and the moderator was the one that seemed to take all the blame. It was a great site, full of movie clips and what not so it was kind of sad that a few bad apples had to spoil it for everyone. I don’t blame Alice for being upset, but I think she needs to realize thats part of being the spotlight, not everyone is going to like you. Ioan did the right thing by siding with his wife though, its what any good husband would do.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Heh, no, that was totally not how it went down, unfortunately. It spilled over into work I was doing for another site, so I got an eyeful of it at the time as it happened.
Basically, the site was a fan site, starting sometime in the mid-90s. Then Ioan anonymously offered to fund it, in something like 2003. (It was one of the better-maintained fan sites out there when the ‘net was young and HTML was basic.) Then, from what I could see, a few fans said catty things on forum threads — really not that bad, mostly critiquing Alice’s dress sense in a pretty tame way, other than that just a few trolls. You know: normal online activity that gets modded. It was really all stuff that could’ve been easily mended with a bit of online relationship management.
But someone on the Ioan/Alice side of the equation was seeing these nasty posts before (part-time) moderators could nix them, like they were hovering over the board. And then Ioan intervened with the moderator/siterunner and sent a letter about disrespecting Alice and then they shut down the site and it was probably one of the stupider approaches to online management and PR I’ve ever seen. Hugely damaging to his fan base, killed off a thriving and practically no-cost publicity arm, and ended up making Alice look like a super-controlling helicopter spouse and Ioan like a pushover, especially since most of the fanbase had been using the site long before Alice appeared on the scene.
There’s a whole other thread to this story involving Alice’s participation on other message boards and treatment of fans, and I think something about her reporting people for editing her Wiki page, I have no idea if it’s true or what… All I know is that lady has a very, very bad rep in many different places.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Ah — looking at her wiki, it’s clear that fans have gone as close to the edge as possible in their description of her. It’s pretty easy to read between the lines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Evans
Check out the history of edits — inexplicably, someone keeps deleting attributed quotes. The back-and-forth is actually sort of hilarious.
And here’s a news article from Wales which is more concise about what went on: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/tm_headline=gruff-tough-after-alice-blast–&method=full&objectid=19054727&siteid=50082-name_page.html
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:19 am
I’m not quite sure why the point is made that it’s going to be ’some international family’. Wales and England are hardly far apart, I’m Welsh and my husband is English and I’ve never thought of our future children as being ‘international’. Is it because they’re currently in LA?
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Sarah, I thought the same thing. Even more so in that her name is Alice EVANS. And, thus, she is Welsh! Perhaps born and raised in England, but Welsh nonetheless. So, not very international at all.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
She was born in New Jersey, actually.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:18 am
Babies are always wonderful news and I am happy for the couple. Ioan is a VERY talented actor and I wish him nothing but success in his career. I think that as with the relationships of strangers or even friends and associates we do not know what goes on behind closed doors and we are in no position to judge.
I have to admit, however, that I once saw an interview that Ioan gave about getting engaged to Alice. I felt truely sorry for this man who seems like a true gentleman detailing how he was degraded and belittled by his future bride. I am always complexed by men who chose to love women who abuse them and their relationship. I only hope that as their marriage evolves and they bring children into the world that they have mutual respect for another.
Best wishes!
May 1st, 2009 at 1:33 am
ment to say perplexed