Man of Modesty
Despite the high level of intelligence, talent, self-confidence, stamina, and determination that Ivan has proven on his journey and despite recent developments towards international fame, he has remained a kind, modest and down-to-earth man.
He does not take any attention or appreciation for granted and is extremely appreciative of his fans and amazingly approachable on social media.
This is a video message Ivan sent to his fans and followers in April 2019 via his team:
And here are some examples through the years of Ivan’s enormously appreciative behaviour on Twitter and his reactions to anyone who addresses him in a friendly way (in mixed order, but starting with the most recent ones):
Ivan does not only like and respond to tweets, but he also is a generous retweeter of media and text tweets addressed to or featuring him.
In addition, he shows his appreciation for his fans by occasionally retweeting posts of his Twitter fan page that are meant to welcome new followers to his team or to thank interactive members of the fan community.
Appreciative remarks, picture edits, and fan art are never wasted on Ivan as he does take note of them (provided he is @mentioned) and always reacts sooner or later with a like at the very least.
You will also find him on Facebook with a personal profile featuring lots of public posts and on his fan page where he is an admin and reacts to posts and comments and sometimes shares a post himself.
If you go back beyond May 2017 you will also find a lot of posts by Ivan including enthusiastic remarks about new jobs.
He usually leaves announcements to his admins now as we LOVE to do them, but there are exceptions and he still usually does a “wrap post” for current projects as far as they are not top secret.
Aside from interacting with fans on Twitter and Facebook directly in a kind and appreciative way, Ivan also created an account on a platform where he is not active just in order to show appreciation to his fans, his fan page, and their followers:
Every couple of days he checks in on Instagram only to acknowledge the posts of his fan page and sometimes the comments left on them by other fans and page followers.
As of early 2022 Ivan has figured out how to use the new “co-creator” feature on Instagram that enables him to share other people’s posts to his own page with a few clicks. Especially if you have created fan art of him and if you don’t dare to invite him yourself, hit up @teamivankaye to do a repost with an invitation anytime!
These examples are proof to the fact that Ivan is both, incredibly modest and appreciative of his fans. There are mainly two reasons for this. One is that he really does not think of himself as better than or different from “normal” people and treats them accordingly:
I’m flattered an delighted that people take the time and trouble to be interested in my stuff. If I see someone I admire, I have to go over and tell them. I understand the impulse and appreciate it.
(“Vikings” Interview with Ivan Kaye, 11th September 2017 on myFanbase)
The other is that he is simply a very kind and gentle person who has been described by superficial acquaintances, fans, colleagues and friends alike as “a lovely man” or in similar terms.
Online Activities, Hobbies, and Interests
As you will have learned from our sub-page “The Power of Passion: Ivan Kaye’s Story” Ivan is a highly skilled darts player. But he does not only play darts himself, he also follows professional dart players and sometimes posts about a current competition on his social media pages.
If you follow him, you will see those posts as well as others about the traditional European season festivals of pagan times – traditions that are shared by many ancient European and non-European cultures.
Ivan usually finds a beautiful nature photo for his season posts as he has a taste for photography and likes to play around with his own photos too. For his profile pictures, he prefers the black and white versions of his headshots or other portrait photos.
Ivan’s interest in the traditional season festivals also connects his fascination with the Viking era which he has stated in a video interview at Frightfest 2013 and his obvious interest in science, especially with regard to the celestial bodies and astronomy.
Ivan’s Twitter followers are looking forward to his posts of the full moon every month. These interests bear witness to Ivan’s general intellectual alertness and erudition that also shows in his posts on historical events (mostly at the occasion of a UK holiday).
Aside from his skills that have a connection to his profession as an actor, like playing several instruments and singing, Ivan has also tried his hand at painting.
The above is a portrait he painted of one of his old cats with charcoal and pastels in record time. Ivan seems to be a scanner personality as he told us that he dropped this hobby because it came too easy to him, hence he lost interest.
About his TV watching habits he said in an interview:
I watch American sit-coms and anything about maths and physics.
(Currently unavailable 2013 interview on Owen Quinn’s Page “The Time Warriors”)
As a true comedian and comedy enthusiast, Ivan has also created and runs a fun page on Facebook that has the goal to give his followers something to laugh. It is called “GLOL.Genuinely Laughed Out Loud”. Here is Ivan’s description from the info section:
Wouldn’t it be Dreamy to Truly Know
the Impact of Your Banter?
Don’t just lol with the drones.
GLOL.
You Know it’s Important.
This means that Ivan spends part of his spare time on Facebook looking for funny posts and selecting some in order to share them on this page just to give his page followers a laugh and thereby a positive experience.
About as famous as Ivan’s kindness and fan appreciation on social media is his inimitable succinct style and his unique way of posting uncommented photos or photos accompanied by cryptic abbreviations in capital letters.
Sometimes these are meant as an obituary for a newly deceased celebrity, sometimes as a commemoration of a historical event on occasion of a holiday, sometimes as a status update and a hint to his whereabouts, thereby often posing delightful riddles for his followers.
His appreciation and retweets of Suzy Dent’s tweets and his use of language in interviews shows already that he is a language geek. It is, therefore, no wonder that he has discovered the new Wordle game in February 2022 as can be seen from the results he shares on Twitter:
And yes, he seems to solve them at 3 out of 6 attempts more often than not.
From a tweet and following conversation with Jill Campbell who works at the Knebworth House Archive of Bulwer-Lytton and shared a fan photo from Ivan’s visit to the museum on its 60th anniversary in 2014 where he brought his old mother along, we learned that Ivan and his parents had worked at the museum ages ago.
She said he used to work as a Saturday assistant serving at the front desk. We are deeply grateful for this information about another one of Ivan’s activities in his youth and about the permission she has given to share the photo publicly to his fan pages.
Ivan’s youthful activities at the museum fit well into the broader picture of him as an erudite, multi-talented person with many interests.
Animal Lover and Supporter of Justice – Causes Ivan Supports
But Ivan is not just kind to people: He is a great animal lover too and also engaged with the protection of our natural environment – love for all living beings might be a way to put his attitude.
Some fifteen years back when he still lived in Oxfordshire Ivan had a beautiful garden around his house and two black dogs as pets as can be seen on these photos by Malcolm Couzens (here added in publicly available low-res version, go here for more).
In February 2017 Ivan adopted a cat from London animal home The Mayhew and supported the animal home not only by this article but also by retweeting some of their tweets on Twitter. Ivan is quoted in the article saying:
We just bought a new house and this felt like the right time to add a new addition to our family – a new start!
I already knew about The Mayhew as I live locally, so I had a look on their website and discovered Kato.
I fell in love with him straight away, he is a feisty character, but that’s what I love about him. We can’t wait to take him home and we are looking forward to spending some quality time with him.
His concern for the protection of our natural environment is obvious from his support of the Hounslow Urban Farm and his role as one of the celebrity supporters of the charity Our Disappearing Planet. He also shares posts on environmental issues and ideas that can help to protect the environment on social media, especially on his Facebook profile.
Sadly, Ivan’s cat Scoob has passed away in winter 2021 less than 5 years . The same is true for his pugs but we do not want to withhold a very sweet photo:
Another cause Ivan supports is the Justice for Andrew Jones campaign. Andrew Jones was a young man who was brutally killed in plain daylight on the street in Liverpool city centre in 2003 just because he had bumped into someone and his apology seemed not enough to the group of people involved. Andrew’s parents are still fighting to get his murderers arrested and put to trial.
Ivan is one of the celebrities who have supported them in their fight with a poster campaign and he still retweets their posts to not let this murder drift into oblivion. If you are following Ivan or our page on Twitter you might want to consider doing the same when you see one of these tweets from time to time.
To get more impressions of Ivan as a person, please have a look at our interview pages where we have shared interview clips and put together a collection of links to all the interviews that are currently available online.
Interview transcripts and more translations will be added piece by piece as soon as possible and we hope that there will be many more appealing interviews with exciting insights in the near future.
Find Ivan on IMDb
Connect with Ivan directly on Twitter
Have a look at Ivan’s Youtube channel
Related pages:
Ivan’s official page on Facebook
Ivan Kaye Fans on Twitter
TeamIvanKaye on Instagram
TeamIvanKaye on Youtube
TeamIvanKaye on Pinterest
Ivan Kaye Source 