What was Ioans reputation in the UK before Hornblower?
TM: Ioan wasn’t at all well known in the UK before Hornblower. He’d had a small part in the film Wilde and also appeared in Titanic as the Petty Officer who came back in a lifeboat to rescue Kate Winslet. He agreed with me that if Kate hadn’t been so selfish and had let Leonardo DiCaprio share her plank of wood, he’d still be alive now… A&E: Is Robert Lindsay well known in the UK? TM: Robert Lindsay is very well known in both theatre and TV in the UK. By coincidence, he’s in the series I’m working on now, playing Fagin in Oliver Twist. A&E: Why do you think Horatio Hornblower was such a hit? Do you think it was a bigger hit in the U.S. than in the UK? TM: I think HH was a hit partly because of Forester’s popularity and partly because it was so well made. It’s extraordinarily difficult to film at sea and they succeeded admirably. Yes, it was more of a hit in the U.S. than in the UK. That was mainly because of the incredibly stupid scheduling in this country. There were about six weeks
