logo
Love Island star goes Instagram official with EastEnders actress girlfriend after romance rumours

Love Island star goes Instagram official with EastEnders actress girlfriend after romance rumours

The Sun22-07-2025
LOVE Island star Michael Griffiths has finally gone Instagram official with his EastEnders actress girlfriend, after romance rumours between the pair.
Season 5 Islander Micheal, 33, has hard launched , 29.
6
6
6
6
Michael is well known by Love Island fans after appearing on the 2019 series, alongside iconic Islanders like Tommy Fury, Molly-Mae Hague and Maura Higgins.
While Rukku is best known her role as Habiba Ahmed on EastEnders.
It's believed they started dating towards the end of last year, but this is the first time Michael has posted about their romance on social media.
Making their relationship Instagram official, the former Islander shared a slew of loved-up snaps from a night out at the boxing.
He then said: "Her first official fight night!
"And what a night it was, here's to many more adventures."
Fans immediately rushed to congratulate them on their new romance, with one writing: "Love this Love Island - EastEnders crossover!"
Another added: "Congrats guys!"
RED CARPET DEBUT
The loved-up couple previously teased their romance last October.
Love Island's Michael Griffiths looks completely different with beard and huge muscles
It came when they made their red carpet debut at the Venom: The Last Dance UK premiere.
The couple looked happy and relaxed as they posed for the camera, although they didn't confirm they were dating at the time.
It's only now that they have finally revealed that they are official.
LOVE ISLAND LOTHARIO
It's fair to say that Michael made waves in the villa during his time on Love Island six years ago.
On the show, he was caught in a love triangle with Amber Gill and Joanna Chimonides sparked one of the series most memorable storylines.
His decision to switch his affections from Amber to Joanna stirred controversy and divided fans, making him one of the shows most-talked about contestants.
6
After leaving the villa, Michael appeared on MTV's Celebrity Ex On The Beach in 2020.
On the show the star was seen havining a whirlwind romance with former Love Islander Ellie Brown.
The couple ended up calling it quits just a few months after confirming their relationship.
BECOMING AN EASTENDERS STAR
Meanwhile, Michael's new girlfriend Rukku played Habiba on EastEnders as part of the Ahmed family.
She joined the show in 2019 playing one half of the Ahmed sisters alongside Priya Davdra's character Iqra.
Throughout her time in Albert Square Rukku tackled a variety of intense and storylines such as her affair with boss Adam Bateman.
But, after just one year the actress left the soap.
Rukku described stepping away from the soap as the "end of a chapter", but hinted that she was "underused" and had a "disappointing" exit.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Jessie J says her ‘hair has been falling out like crazy' after cancer surgery
Jessie J says her ‘hair has been falling out like crazy' after cancer surgery

The Herald Scotland

time13 minutes ago

  • The Herald Scotland

Jessie J says her ‘hair has been falling out like crazy' after cancer surgery

In a recent Instagram post, the Price Tag singer said: 'My hair has been falling out like crazy since the surgery. 'Five weeks today, since my surgery, and I'm feeling ok… my boobs still aren't even, this is the implant still so sore, and then this is my old, oh, you're not old.' She continued: 'Now I'm just trying to figure out what the next kind of six months is going to look like. 'I know that it has to change, and I can't do anything that I was supposed to be doing, but I just want to be able to like, make it work best I can for everybody, me, Sky (her daughter), my fans, but in the right order. 'It's so hard, like you're always going to leave some people disappointed, my perspective on everything has changed so much.' The London-born star also revealed she had a new song 'coming out soon' but said she would 'not be able to do as much promo for it' due to her recovery following the operation, adding that she 'can't have it sitting in my phone for another year'. It comes after she said her latest visit to hospital was a 'reminder to myself to slow down' even though she felt she was already at a slow pace. In an earlier Instagram post, Cornish said: 'This isn't a speedy recovery and it isn't meant to be. 'As an ADHD Aries, fire breathing dragon t-rex, I can do it myself, I'm always ok woman. That slow pace has been a hard reality to accept to be honest. 'I love moving and working and being up and active but I can't be right now, and that's what it is, and I am finding the strength knowing that all can be adjusted to align with a slower pace and the support of my very small inner support circle.' Cornish welcomed her son, Sky Safir Cornish Colman, in 2023, having had a miscarriage in November 2021. She has battled with ill-health throughout her life, having been diagnosed with a heart condition aged eight, suffering a minor stroke aged 18 and having briefly gone deaf in 2020. The singer-songwriter has had three number one songs in the UK singles chart with Domino, Price Tag and Bang Bang. She was awarded four Mobo awards in 2011 including best UK act, best newcomer, best song for Do It Like A Dude and best album with Who You Are, and won the Brit Award for rising star in 2011.

‘I knew my job was to fulfil a man's fantasy': Elizabeth McGovern on Downton, early fame and co-starring with Brad Pitt
‘I knew my job was to fulfil a man's fantasy': Elizabeth McGovern on Downton, early fame and co-starring with Brad Pitt

The Guardian

time14 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

‘I knew my job was to fulfil a man's fantasy': Elizabeth McGovern on Downton, early fame and co-starring with Brad Pitt

For the maudlin among us, the final Downton Abbey film should perhaps come with a warning. Everything in it is tinged with wistfulness – a goodbye to cherished characters and a farewell to a stately home that was a sturdy presence in a transient world. When the ITV series started in 2010, wasn't life … better? Did Elizabeth McGovern feel this too, the sense of time passing? After all, her character, Cora, is now ageing out of custodianship of Downton along with her husband, Lord Grantham, in favour of a younger generation and a changing era as the 1930s dawn. 'No!' says McGovern, snapping me out of my melancholy. 'I feel very excited that I'm going into a gratifying new phase in my career.' As well as reviving Cora, there is the play she has written, Ava: The Secret Conversations. Starring McGovern as Hollywood actor Ava Gardner, it will run in New York, Chicago and Toronto, having made its debut in London in 2022. There is also a new album of her folk-inspired music. 'I feel like I'm just beginning,' she declares as we meet at her publicist's London office. At first glance, McGovern, fine-boned and composed, seems delicate – but if you only go on first impressions, you'll miss her rebellious spirit. Not that making Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale wasn't emotional. 'You don't have to work very hard, as a film-maker, to touch on that depth, because we've been working on it for so many years,' she says. McGovern worried that the absence of Maggie Smith – who died last year after giving the show the brilliantly scathing Dowager Countess – would feel like too big a loss to the Downton world. But she says Smith's presence 'permeates' it. 'She's still very much in the atmosphere. I don't feel there's a big hole. In fact, in some ways, it sort of freed up the rest of the narrative to have a flow, because it's not stopping for her moments. But everything she represents is there. She's in every room, in every interaction, so it's not like she's not there. It's a weird thing.' The women of Downton, whether the steely Lady Mary or spirited young cook Daisy, are gratifyingly tough, but Cora, usually quietly supportive in the background, never seemed that robust, even though it was her money – as an American heiress – that was running everything. Was that difficult to play? 'At times, yes,' says McGovern. 'I think as a contemporary woman, it is hard to feel the straitjacket of that period.' Did she ever fight for Cora to have more agency? 'I wish at times she could have had more interesting stories,' says McGovern, but adds that it wouldn't have been appropriate for her to have had 'any more political or social power, because it just wouldn't be accurate to the time'. Cora, though, is a vision of an exciting America; the daughter of a Jewish immigrant installed at Downton with her bags of new money and her progressive outlook. Were Downton set now, instead of Cora coming here to shake up Britain's class-ridden ways, she would be a wealthy liberal refugee, a bit like Ellen DeGeneres, fleeing Trump's America. McGovern, who grew up in California, has lived in the UK for the past 32 years. She is shocked and disappointed at modern US politics. 'I mean,' she says, 'it's a reality that must have been bubbling away under what I thought was America. It can't have come from nowhere.' But, describing herself as a positive person, she adds: 'I think it will be painful, but we have too much successful history as a free country for us to let it go. It's all of our responsibility to peacefully make sure we hold on to everything that I was confident – and complacent about – that America represented.' McGovern had huge success early on. Her debut was in Robert Redford's 1980 film Ordinary People, and she won an Oscar nomination for her role in her second film, Ragtime. This was followed by a part in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, opposite Robert de Niro. 'I think I did feel like, 'Gosh, this isn't as hard as people say.'' She smiles. 'Until I later experienced how difficult it is. My experience early on was just trying to keep my head on straight, do job after job, and do what most people are doing at that age – try to grow up. I only realised later how difficult it is to sustain a career.' Hers wasn't a showbiz family: her parents were teachers. And although she has loved acting since she was a child, it was never about becoming a star. As a young woman in an often dangerous industry, this probably protected her. 'I was never desperate, so I could always just walk away. A lot of young women didn't feel they could. I think I was very lucky.' It also made her see the downsides of fame. 'I think I did manage to avoid it myself, but the price you pay for fame is that it becomes really hard to have any relationships of intimacy, because you are collateral. Your whole being has sort of been sold, and that creates a tension about what people want from you.' A lot of McGovern's early roles were as the girlfriend to the male lead. Then, she says: 'I went from being the girlfriend to the perfect wife, and that I found frustrating. Most movies, television – it's always the man's point of view. It's such a deep, subliminal thing that audiences are not even aware of it. I wasn't even particularly aware of it. I knew my job early on was to fulfil a man's fantasy of the woman they wanted. It never occurred to me to even question it.' Brad Pitt played McGovern's boyfriend in the 1994 comedy The Favor. We joke – bitterly – that were she to be in a film with him now, she would probably be cast as his mother. This says a lot about what's still considered desirable in a woman even though, at 64, McGovern is only three years Pitt's senior. 'I really don't think that, just because society is viewing something that way, we have to. I try to have this discussion with my daughters. We can have a feeling independent of the consensus in society. I've just done my own thing and just kept doing it.' She bristles, not unreasonably, when I point out that her embracing her silver hair seems rare in her business. Was that a political decision? 'Not really. But once again, I feel like a woman my age – that's what we're asked to talk about. I regret that about society.' There is something bracing about the way McGovern carves her own path. She left Hollywood and moved to London to start a family; she has two grownup daughters with her husband, the film-maker and producer Simon Curtis (who directed The Grand Finale). Approaching her 40s, she started a band, Sadie and the Hotheads, and started releasing music. 'I have to remind myself,' she says, 'that people will either like it or they won't – and whatever they feel is fine with me. It's about doing it.' In her 50s, she wrote her play about Gardner, drawn to the actor's independent spirit. Now in her 60s, she is writing a screenplay, although she won't say what it's about. 'It's my next obsession. I really want to write stuff. I'm really excited about that.' Doing so is partly a way to create interesting work for herself as an older actor. There has certainly been plenty of talk about this – does she think the situation has improved? 'Not that I've noticed.' She loved the recent show Dying for Sex, in which Michelle Williams plays a terminally ill woman in her 40s who embarks on a last attempt at sexual exploration. 'It's such a female story. I found that to be really encouraging, but it's not going to be about someone my age.' Why? Is it because society considers the thought of older women having a sex life shocking? 'I think possibly, yes. I mean, what can we do as women, except just keep going and not buy into it? We have no other choice.' If it takes a bit of effort, the pay-off is surely worth it – if McGovern and her outlook are anything to go by. 'It's a daily exercise in getting your head tuned into the right thing. It's not that I blame anyone for accepting the status quo, but it doesn't mean I have to. No way.' She laughs. 'No way.' Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is out on 11 September in Australia, and 12 September in the UK and US. Ava: The Secret Conversations is at New York City Center until 14 September.

Four bedroom home looks normal from the outside… but wait until you see what's hidden behind closed doors
Four bedroom home looks normal from the outside… but wait until you see what's hidden behind closed doors

The Sun

time14 minutes ago

  • The Sun

Four bedroom home looks normal from the outside… but wait until you see what's hidden behind closed doors

THIS four bedroom home may look completely normal from the outside - but there's a hidden secret inside. The Grade-II listed house that was once home to Lord Byron has hit the market for £850,000. 6 6 6 Centrally located, the Nottingham residence is hard to miss. It boasts four bedrooms spread across 3,287 square feet and is steeped in local history. Since Byron's days there, the building has been "sympathetically restored" and has all the modern amenities a family could need. This includes a bespoke kitchen, two reception rooms and four bathrooms. The home is decorated in neutral tones with stylish finishes throughout and is flooded with natural light, according to Luxury Property News. Accessed via a driveway with gated access, its based in the historic St James' Street in the city centre. Meanwhile the outside space consists of a courtyard with patio decking and raised planters for a 'low maintenance' garden space. The house is currently available with Savills who described it as a 'magnificent property full of light'. But while it may have many impressive features, underneath the house is every bit as note-worthy. A stunning labyrinth of caves lurks beneath the historic property. We moved into a caravan in my mother-in-law's garden for a year, sure it was cramped but we saved £20k They're used as cellars that spread across two basement levels beneath the main living spaces above. The space has lighting, electrics and heating too and can be used for multiple purposes. The property was home to Lord Byron between the ages of 10 and 12 before he became one of Britain's most celebrated poets. A plaque adorns the front of the house dedicated to Byron explaining that he lived there between 1798 and 1799. Other homes with hidden secrets aren't uncommon either - although some are more impressive than others. The Sun recently reported on an eccentric home in Shropshire with a peculiar feature within. The home comes complete with an exposed toilet at the top of the stairs providing a live studio audience experience on the loo. While another home in Blackpool has undergone a jaw-dropping transformation even though it looks entirely ordinary from the outside. The owners spent nearly two years converting the modest semi-detached property into a high-spec holiday home complete with a private nightclub and cinema room. It even has space for 24 guests with nine en-suite bedrooms and 15 beds. 6 6 6

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store