HOLLYWOOD star Ioan Gruffudd will become the latest Welsh actor to take on a real-life role when he plays legendary children’s author Kenneth Grahame in a film adaptation of the Wind in the Willows writer’s life.The Cardiff-born actor has been cast as the writer in Banking On Mr Toad, which will focus on the peculiar tale of Grahame’s life with his wife Elspeth Thompson.
Gruffudd’s role in the film has more than a little in common with his great friend Matthew Rhys’ part in the Dylan Thomas biopic The Edge of Love.
In both films, the Welsh actors played famous writers in stories revealing details of their often tortuous love lives.
The Edge of Love revolved around Dylan Thomas’ relationship with his wife Caitlin and his alleged affair with family friend Vera Phillips.
At the centre of the action was the moment Phillips’ husband William Killick attacked the Thomases’ house armed with a shotgun.
The Grahame biopic, which will start shooting in Ireland later this year under the direction of Bruce Beresford, is expected to feature the moment in 1903 when an intruder broke into the Bank of England – where the writer worked before his literary career took off – and fired three shots.
All three missed Grahame.
The film will reportedly focus on how Grahame’s career was shaped by his time at the bank – where he rose to become its youngest secretary of all time having started as a clerk in 1879 – and his relationship with Elspeth, likely to be played by Oscar-nominated actress Samantha Morton.
The pair met in 1897 when Grahame was 41, and Elspeth was a 36-year-old spinster who had written to him during their courtship using the pseudo-rural language of a semi-literate milkmaid.
Alison Prince, who has written books about Grahame’s life, said: “She wrote to him as a dairymaid in cod rural language and he was desperately touched.
Their correspondence is toe-curling and embarrassing, but that is the way they lived – in fantasy.”
Elspeth was a hypochondriac with a nervous disposition who spent long periods of time away from Grahame convalescing at a spa.
Having suffered from ill health himself during his time at the bank, Grahame took early retirement in June 1908 – the same year Wind In The Willows was eventually published after being repeatedly rejected.
But their life was struck by tragedy when the couple’s only son Alastair – commonly believed to have provided the inspiration for the character of Mr Toad – committed suicide on a railway track while studying at Oxford University.
The concept for Wind In The Willows had started life as a series of bedtime stories told to Alastair, who was partially blind.
The stories about Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad have found favour with generations of children enraptured by the tales and the illustrations of EH Shepherd.
Timothy W Haas, who will produce the £15m film, described the story of Grahame’s life as “astonishing”.
He said: “We have the inside story of Kenneth and Elspeth.
She was as much a cause and effect on Kenneth’s character as the bank was.
Grahame is both a heroic and tragic figure.
He left us Wind In The Willows, which is iconic, and his life was truly unconventional.
His story is astonishing.”
While Gruffudd has played real-life characters before – most notably William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace, he does not have the track record of some of his Welsh contemporaries for playing real historical figures.
Port Talbot-born Michael Sheen has made his name for a series of such parts, ranging from Kenneth Williams to Tony Blair, and including David Frost and Brian Clough.
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