Day I faced the band of Brandos
ACTOR Ioan Gruffudd has told how he turned up to his first day at top drama school RADA in a shellsuit.
The 46-year-old star of Hornblower and ITV’s Liar said he recalls walking in and seeing his fellow students “looking like Marlon Brando”.
All the other wannabe actors were in leather jackets, jeans and white T-shirts.
By contrast, Gruffudd was kitted out in a Welsh football tracksuit.
The dad-of-two said he had been advised to wear “something comfortable” ahead of his first day at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
He remembered walking up in his shellsuit while others looked “like Marlon Brando... wearing jeans, white T-shirts and leather jackets”.
He said: “I was a very young-looking 18-year-old – very patriotic, very fervently Welsh.
“I was a virgin as well... all the girls were like ‘No, we’re not going to be the first, we can’t have this young kid falling in love with us.’”
CROSSBOW cannibal Stephen Griffiths became a serial killer in an attempt to find fame, say psychologists.
The oddball was desperate to join monsters such as Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
Griffiths murdered three women in 2009 and 2010 and psychologist Paul Britton said he committed his crimes because he wanted to stand out.
He added: “The ultimate way of standing out from his point of view is to be recognised as this unique killer and to stand in the hall of fame, as it were, with these other people that he then comes to value.”
Another expert, Adrian Needs, said: “I think there’s a good chance it did bring a kind of fulfilment. For the first time he felt a place in society, even though it’s a bad one.”
Fame-hungry Griffiths, who features in TV’s Making A Monster, gave himself the Crossbow Cannibal nickname.
Psychologist Richard Badcock said: “To do it yourself, to try and give yourself that label, bespeaks a particular type of arrogance which you do find routinely associated with sadomasochistic actions and behaviours.”
Griffiths, now 50, admired Sutcliffe for his notoriety and copied his actions.
He moved to the same area of Bradford and only targeted sex workers, killing Susan Rushworth, Suzanne Blamires and Shelley Armitage. When he faced trial he even hired the same legal team as his idol.
Crime lecturer Julian Boon said: “Griffiths wanted to be bigger than
Sutcliffe, more macabre, more ghastly, in the eyes of mere mortals. He’s walking in the shoes of what he would admire.”
Paul Britton added: “He wants you to know that he’s not just a run of the mill character, that he has ingenuity, creativity. He’s thinking ‘I have a crossbow, I don’t just use a hammer or a knife. Look at me, remember me.”
Warning signs were ignored before Griffiths killed his first victim.
During a spell in prison for a violent incident he told probation officers he fantasised about becoming a serial killer but no action was taken.
He also had hundreds of books on serial killers and studied for a PHD on the same topic. Even after Griffiths was sectioned he wasn’t given treatment.
Mr Cullen said: “He told a probation officer years before he was going to kill, he was going to commit murder. What happened to that? That’s actually an offence – that’s a threat to kill – and nothing was done.
“He was signalling for years his intent, it’s extraordinary. It’s a kind of indictment of the society in which we live.”
Griffiths was sentenced to a whole life order, meaning he will die in jail.
Making a Monster continues on Crime+Investigation on Mondays at 9pm. The series is available on all catch up and on-demand services.