21 January 2024 , 12:58
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Bianca Wallace admitted she gave Ioan Gruffudd a "get out of jail free" card to leave her less than a year before he popped the question.
The Australian actress, 31, and Welsh actor Ioan, 50, announced their engagement on Saturday night, just over seven months on from the Titanic star being declared legally divorced from his first wife Alice Evans.
Bianca and Ioan, who began dating shortly after his bitter split from Alice, both shared a joint post on Instagram, with a snap revealing Bianca's new engagement ring. "The most precious thing happened…" the newly-engaged couple captioned the shot as they shared their happy news with fans.
Speaking in April last year, Bianca gave a glimpse inside their romance and admitted the Fantastic Four actor had been "her rock" since she told him about her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
Bianca Wallace and Ioan Gruffudd announced their engagement to fans on Saturday (Dave Benett/Getty Images)
The Aussie actress has previously spoken about how her partner supports her during MS flare-ups (iambiancawallace/Instagram)Bianca, who most recently appeared in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, was told by doctors she had MS at the age of 25 in October 2018, previously explaining the diagnosis was "very aggressive in nature, it came on hard and fast. I was at work in accounting and I tried to pick up a pen and I couldn't."
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The NHS described MS as "condition that can affect the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of potential symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation or balance." Bianca told fans in 2022 how she currently suffers with occasionally going blind in one eye and has nerve damage along the right side of her body.
"There was an initial shock, I can't really describe how I felt, I've never been able to put it into words, this is why I haven't spoken about it in the last three years as I don't quite know what to say," Bianca said of her diagnosis when speaking with her Instagram followers in 2022.
She went on to add: "It has been the most confronting this to be dealt in life. It's not something a 25 year old would have ever expected. I then put the pen in my other hand to try to write and I just couldn't. 'I was sent to the emergency room and from there everything changed. Within the next few weeks I couldn't walk anymore, the entire right side of my body was completed whacked out. I had to start a journey I wasn't ready for. You're never ready for a diagnosis like this.
In a piece for The Telegraph in April last year, Bianca shared that she told her now-fiance Ioan, or 'Yo' as she calls him, about her MS and even gave him a "get out of jail free" card if it was too much for him. Recalling telling her future husband about her health condition, Bianca wrote: "Yo (Ioan) didn't hesitate for a second, listing all of the reasons he was in love with me and why he was here to stay, and that no MS diagnosis or scary future would deter him."
Continue to discuss her relationship and how Ioan comforts her during health battles, Bianca also mentioned: "When things are hard I sob to Yo about not feeling strong enough to face what is ahead of me, alongside the guilt I feel that he has entered into such a complicated journey."
Newly-engaged couple Bianca and Ioan first announced their relationship on Instagram in October 2021, with Ioan filing for divorce from his wife of 14 years Alice, citing "irreconcilable differences". Ioan and Alice met on the set of 102 Dalmatians in 2000 and tied the knot seven years later in Mexico. They have two daughters; Ella, 12, and Elise, 8, but split after 13 years of marriage in January 2021. A messy divorce followed, with the former couple finally declared legally divorced last year.