The invention provides wire rod excellent in drawability and steel wire made from the wire rod as starting material with high productivity at good yield and low cost. A hard steel wire rod of a specified composition is heated in a specified temperature range to conduct post-reaustenization patenting and thereby obtain a high-carbon steel wire excellent in ductility that has a pearlite structure of an area ratio of 97% or greater and the balance of non-pearlite structures including bainite, degenerate-pearlite and pro-eutectoid ferrite and whose fracture reduction of area RA satisfies Expressions (1), (2) and (3) below: RA≧RAmin  (1), where RAmin=a−b×pearlite block size (μm), a=−0.0001187×TS (MPa)2+0.31814×TS (MPa)−151.32  (2) b=0.0007445×TS (MPa)−0.3753  (3).