The very colourful love life of passionate Mr Poldark
HE is the latest object of female lust from Caithness to Cornwall — a heartbroken hero who is all brooding desire and smouldering good looks.
And Aidan Turner, the new Ross Poldark, certainly has plenty of tumultuous romantic experiences to draw on.
Perhaps, given his good looks, a rather swashbuckling love life is to be expected: gossips in Dublin insist that he was once — when between serious girlfriends — seen leaving a nightclub in the city with no fewer than three attentive females in tow.
He has had four serious romances to date, breaking the heart of one gorgeous actress and being thrown over by another.
His first girlfriend was actress india Whisker, a pretty blonde whom he met in 2004 while at drama school in Dublin.
she was followed by another actress, brunette Charlene McKenna. They lived together in Camden, North London, from 2007 to 2009.
she told an interviewer how happy they were together. But within a few weeks they split, and she was apparently devastated.
Turner then fell for Lenora Crichlow, his co- star in the TV series Being Human — from 2009 he played a vampire and she a ghost. Then in 2011, he and Lenora parted ways and he decided to quit the series while she stayed on. it seems that this was a source of great heartbreak for him.
He said this week: ‘i don’t know anyone on this planet who hasn’t had their heart broken. it’s happened to me. Love is love, it’s the purest and rawest thing we have in life.’
The following year he started to date the irish actress sarah Greene. she was nominated for a Tony award forr her performance on Broadway opposite Daniel Radcliffe in The Cripple of inishmaan, and last year starred in the film Adam Jones with Bradley Cooper.
Their romance is still going strong after three years, but Turner admits that they are often separated by work. He spent 18 months making The Hobbit films in New Zealand early on in their liaison.
He explained of the periods s of separation: ‘it’s all we’ve ever known [as a couple] and d it makes for good times when n we meet up again and maybee have a month straight when n we’re both unemployed and d watching movies every day. it’s s fun to laze around and doo normal things.’
Aidan is quietly bowled over byy his sudden fame. Asked how it feels to be an overnight sex symbol, he chuckles. ‘Ah, i wouldn’t say that,’ he demurred yesterday. ‘Not at all. But it is nice that the show has gone down quite well and people are positive about it.’
UNDERSTATEMENT must be as much a part of his make-up as the kind of looks which have reduced the female half of the country to jelly.
in the show, Turner is British Army officer Ross Poldark, who returns to Cornwall following the American War of independence to find his father dead, the family’s tin mine in ruins and his sweetheart, Elizabeth, engaged to his cousin.
since the opening episode on sunday, there has been praise for the ensemble acting and the script — but mostly for how dishy the lead looks in a pair of britches britches. Even his mother, Eileen, is being stopped in the street and asked how it feels to have a sex-symbol son. ‘That is very funny,’ Aidan told me this week. ‘i’ve definitely never had that before. i can’t believe it, really.’
i can reveal that Turner is contracted to be in a further five series of Poldark, should the BBC make the obvious decision to make more. in the meantime, he is staying with his mum in south Dublin, although he is hoping to go away on holiday soon with girlfriend sarah.
One of those watching Poldark on sunday was his old drama teacher Patrick sutton, director of Dublin’s Gaiety school of Acting, who told me: ‘i settled down in front of the telly like a child waiting to meet Father Christmas. And then he comes on, all brooding and bubbling and seething, and i said to myself: “Well, that’s a grand day out.” i could not be prouder of him.’
Mr sutton, who counts Hollywood star Colin Farrell among his previous students,td t putst Aid Aidan’s’ success d down to talent, hard work and good manners — all three of which Gaiety school students are taught.
The son of Eileen, an accountant at a local carpet store, and Pat, an electrician, there is no acting background in Aidan’s family — he hadn’t even been to a play before he went to drama college.
He was raised in Clondalkin, just west of Dublin, and went to st MacDara’s Community College in Templeogue. One of two brothers, h he recallsll h havingi b been a bit off a tearaway as a schoolboy. He told one interviewer: ‘i remember my mum getting called up a lot.’
His great talent at that age was ballroom dancing, and he even represented his country. He travelled around ireland and internationally, competing in ballroom and Latin for around ten years.
Tommy shaughnessy, president of Dancesport Federation of ireland, told me: ‘i used to teach Aidan. He danced for years. But after i told his mother the cost of making it in international ballroom dancing, she said they couldn’t afford it and told me that he might go into acting.
‘This surprised me as he was very shy. Anyway, he joined the Gaiety school and the rest is history.’
Turner had no idea what he wanted to do after school. After a stint working with his dad as an apprentice, he toyed with the idea of becoming a professional snooker player before spotted an advert for the Gaiety school of Acting. ‘i didn’t know anything about this world at all,’ said Aidan. ‘i felt intimidated from th the get-go, but thought: “That’s just ri right for me.” The sense of potential fa failure is a buzz.
‘Being around committed people th there was very inspiring.’
He graduated in 2004, and had vario ous theatre roles before getting a break in an irish television medical drama, The Clinic, in 2008. The fo following year came Being Human.
This attracted an excitable group o of young fans whom he calls ‘ the posse’, and who have followed his every move ever since.
He gained more fans playing Kili, a h heartthrob of the dwarf world in P Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films. But his biggest break was Poldark.
Earlier this year he said: ‘The offer came in and i said: “What the hell’s Poldark?” i had to Google it.
‘Then i called my mum. she said: “You’d better not mess this up!” ’
Perhaps we can forgive his ignorance as, since he’s still only 31, he wasn’t even born when the original seventies TV version aired.
One wonders if either he or girlfriend sarah are ready for the attention which has just exploded, even more of which will no doubt follow with the promise of a buff and shirtless Poldark in future episodes.
sarah said in an interview last year that she had been outraged when some fans took pictures of him when he was asleep on the London Underground.
But he says of the ardent kerfuffle: ‘i don’t think she’ll be bothered, no. We’re both actors, we understand that it is part of our job.’
in Aidan’s case, the ‘job’ seems to be the play the role of newly minted national sex symbol — and he’s doing it to perfection.