Even in their terrifying fast-bowling pomp, no one ever described Curtly Ambrose, Brett Lee or Dale Steyn as the world’s scariest man. No one was saying it about Martyn Ford during his cricketing days either, but it is a phrase following him around now as he thrives in a new career and a drastically changed body.
In his teenage years Ford was a tall, lean opening bowler in the youth ranks of Warwickshire who played alongside Ian Bell. His height is still a notable 6ft 6in but he now weighs 22½ stone. Very little of it is fat. It is a striking transformation but equally remarkable is his third act as one of Hollywood’s villains of choice.
He plays Goliath in the new Amazon Prime series House of David, a sort of biblical Game of Thrones, but Ford says he identifies more with the character who (spoiler alert) triumphs over his with the help of a slingshot. “It’s bizarre, because my life is David, not Goliath,” he says, not entirely convincingly. “It’s the story of the underdog and always having these crazy dreams that seem obnoxious, which other people think are ridiculous.”
For a long time those goals were all about training, often spending four hours a day in the gym, six days a week. At one point he was eating hourly and around 10,000 calories every day. The gym is still a big part of his life but his aim now is to be seen as a performer who can do more than “just scream and growl”, as he puts it.
At his biggest Ford was four stone heavier than today but even dressed down in knitwear he remains imposing. The facial tattoos which extend onto his shaved head offset any attempt to pass unnoticed, while crossing and uncrossing his legs looks like it should require planning permission. “I’m enjoying being healthy and fit again, that’s where I’d put myself at the moment. I can move functionally, I’m flexible, whereas before I was just big and strong.”
Alongside House of David this year he is starring in Mortal Kombat 2 with previous credits on F9, the ninth film in the Fast and Furious series and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The roles are getting juicier and the number of lines is increasing. “It’s just being patient, kind of like batting in cricket, I suppose, wait for that right ball before you try to strike. And unfortunately, I was never good at that. I made every ball the right ball.”
None of this seemed plausible when Ford’s cricketing career was ended prematurely by a series of misfortunes. He suffered a serious groin injury, caught glandular fever, his grandfather died and his first serious relationship ended. “What happened after was something that I’ll never get over, and that was I quit. That was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life for about a year.”
Still a teenager, Ford was affected so profoundly that he did not leave the house for two months. “I still remember lying on the sofa and just not wanting to move. Suicide was never a thought process, it was just I couldn’t be bothered. I was absolutely lost, with no idea what to do. It was the worst time in my life by far.”
He was diagnosed with anorexia but dismissed it, although his health had become so poor that he was struggling to stand up without collapsing. The physical transformation which followed, the tattoos and his shaved head are all a result of that breakdown. “I definitely wouldn’t have gotten the roles with the body shape I had. I’d have been pretty much like Glenn McGrath, who’s a phenomenal bowler, but not a movie villain.”
In his youth Ford bowled in nets at Kevin Pieteresen and Andrew Flintoff. Could he have reached their level if he had carried on? “I would have been a good county player, never England level. My action was horrendous, you’d have a yorker, a bouncer and a beamer all in the same over, but my gosh the ball went quick.”
‘Horrible reality’ of misled young athletes
Beyond that fast ball, cricket holds few positive recollections for Ford. He falls into the surprisingly large category of athletes who were unfussed about watching their own sport and he struggles to engage whatsoever these days, saying he has a near-PTSD relationship with cricket. “When your whole life just gets wiped from you and you’re lost at the age of 18 or 19, it’s a very hard place to look back on and smile. I fell out of the system completely and was told to rehab my own injuries.”
There is no particular ill-will towards cricket, but he does have issues with how young athletes are being misled across every sport. He says: “They build kids up with BS fantasies because they need numbers on a team. You can’t have a football team with two players, so you tell the other nine they’re going to be great and their parents need to bring them five times a week.
“They’ll feed you a fantasy that you’re going to be a top-class player, use you for the years they need you then just wave you goodbye with a free kit and some boots. That’s the horrible reality.”
Nevertheless one of those moments of horrible realism changed Ford’s mindset. “I remember going to the ECB nets after about a year or so at Warwickshire at 14 or 15 and being told by a coach I was too fat. It sounds so brutal but it wasn’t said horribly, he took me into a room and didn’t embarrass me in front of people. But it was the best thing that was ever said to me. In today’s world you’d never work again.
“It’s an energy that’s dying in the world, honesty and brutality. I definitely responded well to that, but it might be part of the reason why I was so hard on myself and then obviously after that you end up with problems.”
Opposing advice helped him out of his post-cricket depression and anorexia. A nutritionist told him a simple fact: he had to eat food in order to train. “It sounds so stupid and ridiculous but I’d realised why I was so depressed and it was because I wasn’t able to train. That was when my obsession with bodybuilding came in.”
He describes himself as “a walking billboard” in his subsequent years as a personal trainer. One client was aghast shortly after he had his first head tattoo, telling him he would never work again. “That was probably the opinion of every single person that saw me, but it turned out to be the best and stupidest decision of my life. If I hadn’t created such a loud external appearance with the shaved head, the tattoos and the muscles I would never have been spotted.”
He is moving in different circles these days, including the Royal Box at Murrayfield for Scotland’s game against Ireland in this year’s Six Nations. “Princess Anne came over to chat to me. I shook her hand and thought ‘I’m not sure I should have done that,’ but she put her hand out to me, so I think that’s fine, right?”
She cannot, I suggest, have much experience with head tattoos. “She looked at me a bit oddly, like ‘how have you got in this box?’ But we spoke for a brief moment and she didn’t see the tattoo any more, that’s what I hope.”
