Alice Evans and Ioan Gruffudd seemed happily married for the past thirteen years
until the actress began tweeting all the intimate and shocking details about their
crumbling marriage for the world to see. What caused their marriage to derail so suddenly,
and what led Alice to plead for money online from her friends and followers?
Ioan Gruffudd met Alice Evans while filming 102 Dalmatians back in 2000. At the time,
she was in a serious relationship with Olivier Picasso - the grandson of the great Pablo Picasso.
Alice and Olivier had been together for about eight years and also lived together.
Alice was just 22 years old, and Olivier was 30 when they first started dating, and after
all their years together, she felt like he still saw her as "a little girl." However, the actress
decided to end her relationship with Picasso because he was taking too long to propose to her.
Alice explained, "I had a fantastic relationship with Olivier and would
have married him if he'd asked me, but he didn't."
So, shortly after she called it quits with Olivier, Alice started dating Ioan. The
pair started off as friends first, but soon their friendship grew into something more.
Evans and Gruffudd kept their budding romance a secret for quite some time because the actress
didn't want her ex to catch wind of her seeing someone else before it was something serious.
In 2002, about two years after they met, the couple shared their relationship with the public.
When asked why they had kept their love under wraps for so long,
Alice shared, "I wanted Olivier to be the first to know, which is why we've kept it a secret.
But we reached a point where I realized it wasn't just a fling."
The actress explained that she and Ioan had spoken about where their relationship was going,
and they realized that what they had was serious. So, she felt like she owed it
to Olivier, to be honest about her new relationship before it was made public.
She added, "I've never had a one-night stand, which is why Ioan and I were friends for so
long before anything happened. But now that we are in love I'd be silly to let this one go."
However, she did admit that she felt bad for Olivier and that they hadn't
been in contact since they broke up. She hoped that they could find
a way to be friends now that she had moved on with her love life.
Evans and Gruffudd got engaged in 2006.
As it turned out, the actress played her part in making sure that he was going to pop the question.
In fact, Ioan confessed that he was given an ultimatum by Alice regarding their engagement.
He explained, "Alice has been very patient with my procrastinating with my male ways! She did
give me somewhat of an ultimatum – a gentle nudge – which was the best thing she could do, really."
Ioan also gushed about the strong bond that they share.
He said that when they got engaged, there were a lot of people who said, "Oh,
actors who are married can get quite difficult because there's too many egos involved." But he
explained that he and Alice were different because they've had such "a fantastic relationship."
In the lead-up to the wedding, the actor shared that he and Alice were organizing everything for
the celebration themselves but admitted that it was a bit of a "burden" to put together.
Thankfully, all their hard work paid off the following year when they were finally able to
get married. The couple wed in Mexico during an intimate gathering with close family and friends.
From the outside, it seemed as though the couple had been happy over the years.
In 2009, just two years into their marriage, the couple welcomed their first daughter,
Ella Betsi Janet Gruffudd. Four years later, they had another girl, Elsie Marigold Gruffudd.
However, in 2016, Evans revealed in a candid op-ed that they turned to IVF
to help them conceive as they had each put their careers before parenthood.
"The fact is that Ioan and I left it late — very late — to start our
family. And the worst thing is, it was deliberate. So we found ourselves
playing a traumatic and expensive IVF lottery game that we were lucky to win."
Alice was 41 years old when she gave birth to their first child. The actress admitted
that falling pregnant the second time was even more difficult than the first,
and it took them eight cycles of IVF before they finally conceived their second daughter.
She added, "I know how lucky I am. I won the lottery.
I get to kiss goodnight to the two most precious human beings I've ever met."
Despite their struggles to conceive, everything else in their marriage seemed smooth sailing.
That is until Ioan admitted in an interview in 2020 that he and Alice had been struggling to
make things work. The actor admitted it was hard for them to make time for each other,
especially when they were working.
He said, "I think we've struggled the past four
years, making time for each other because physically we're apart."
Then, in the most surprising turn of events, in January 2021,
Alice announced to the world that her marriage was coming to an end in a tweet!
In a since-deleted Twitter post from January 26,
Evans claimed her husband didn't offer up much explanation other than the "no longer loves" her.
"Sad news. My beloved husband/soulmate of 20 years, Ioan Gruffudd, has announced he is to
leave his family, starting next week. Me and our young daughters girls are very confused
and sad. We haven't been given a reason except that he 'no longer loves me.' I'm so sorry."
The tweet was later deleted, followed by Alice alleging that it was her
estranged husband who had taken to her account and removed the message.
She posted another Twitter message, reading: 'Hi there.
I didn't delete the tweet from a few hours ago about him leaving.
He did. From my account... And hell yes, when I am being gaslit and mentally tortured, then hell yes,
I will wash my linen in public; however, this tweet was also deleted later on.
After Evans deleted the tweet, the couple released a joint statement the following day.
"As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for our family and we remain
committed to our children. Thank you for respecting our privacy."
It was difficult for people to think that the couple wanted to maintain their privacy,
especially after Alice shared such intimate details about their troubles in an online tweet.
As it turned out, the couple was unable to make things work, and just two months later,
Evans filed for divorce, six months shy of what would've been their 14th wedding anniversary.
In October later that year, Ioan Gruffudd went public with his new girlfriend,
Australian actress, and producer Bianca Wallace.
Gruffudd and Wallace met and worked together on the set of the TV show "Harrow."
The actor shared the first picture of the pair on Instagram with the caption,
"Thank you for making me smile again."
Just hours later, Evans fired off a series of tweets in which she accused her ex of having
an affair with Wallace — who she claimed was a friend — for the last three years.
"So it turns out that my husband, after two years of telling me I'm a bad person and I'm not
exciting and he no longer want so to have sex with me and he just wants to be on set abroad…Has
been in a relationship for THREE years behind all our backs. Good luck, Bianca."
Alice added that Ioan was her best friend and "twin soul" and that they used to speak almost
three or four times a day when he was working overseas. She tweeted, "I don't know how to move
on. I will, but at the moment I have no idea." However, a wardrobe assistant who worked with
Wallace and Gruffudd on the set of 'Harrow' responded to Evans' tweets. The assistant
denied that Alice was ever friends with Bianca and that there was no way that Ioan had been having an
affair over the past three years because he had only recently started working with her.
The assistant concluded by tweeting, "Don't buy into the lies you are being fed."
Alice's numerous outbursts on Twitter were followed by an immense amount of backlash
on Twitter as people accused her of airing out her dirty laundry online for attention. However,
the backlash did not stop the actress from vowing to write a tell-all memoir on her break-up.
She wrote, "People may accuse me of washing my dirty linen in public but the sad truth
is that the internet has been my friend and salvation through these awful months.
But, it can be torture, too. And there was no greater torture for me than the
day I saw him with his new girlfriend on his Instagram feed earlier this week."
Alice then wrote a first-person piece for the Daily Mail on just
how her marriage split destroyed her and made her feel "dead."
The actress revealed her estranged husband promised her he would leave her if she
ever gained weight. She then tweeted, "I guess he was true to his word this time."
Evans went on to share that the story would be funny if it "wasn't so terrible."
Adding that, she didn't know how it all ended up like this. She confessed that
she couldn't work out why "a love so strong" like theirs ended up "going so badly wrong."
In 2022, it was revealed that Ioan was seeking a restraining order against
Alice. In the lengthy court case, Gruffudd then accused Evans of domestic abuse, which she denies.
Alice recently claimed she would receive no financial support from Ioan
and that she was struggling to pay her legal fees and would be unable to 'feed or clothe'
their daughters with her dwindling funds. The actress added that everyone around her has 'let
her down and said she is facing having 'nowhere to live' amid the legal battle.
The actress later confessed to firing her lawyers because she could no longer
afford any more legal fees. Alice then went on to set up a GoFundMe
page to raise $25,000 and asked friends for money as her divorce fight continued.
There's no doubt that divorce can be a messy and very painful thing to experience.
We can't imagine how hard it must have been for Alice to lose her husband and see him
move on so soon. However, sometimes things don't work out, as difficult as it may seem.
We truly hope that both Alice and Ioan are able to come to an amicable agreement over
their divorce and that they can both move on to be happy in their respective lives.