The actor Orlando Bloom was classically trained at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Shortly after his graduation he was cast as the elf Legolas in the feature film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, directed by Peter Jackson and based on the hit fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. The role made him a star and a favorite pinup for teenage girls. His other films include Wilde (1997), Black Hawk Down (2001, starring Josh Hartnett), The Kelly Gang (2003, with Naomi Watts and Heath Ledger) and Elizabethtown (2006, with Kirsten Dunst). Bloom He starred alongside Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley in the swashbuckling adventures Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007).
Career Highlights: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
First Major Screen Credit: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Biography
Orlando Bloom began reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a teenager before abandoning the books in favor of sports and girls. He did not complete the three volumes until his early twenties: first in print, and then on camera as one of a handful of actors carefully selected for New Line Cinema's highly anticipated, $270 million, three-film screen adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The international success of the trilogy's first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), made Bloom a sought-after young actor. The talented Brit works the talk show circuit, mugs in magazines, and appears at every important award show -- always with a playful demeanor and an uncorrupted smile that suggest he could still be just as easily fulfilled by rugby and romance.
Bloom was raised in Canterbury, Kent, with his sister, Samantha. Their mother taught them to enjoy the arts and encouraged them to participate in the local Kent Festival. Bloom began by reciting poetry and prose, displaying an advanced sensitivity to tone and modulation. Yet, it wasn't this precociousness or his frequent trips to the theater that influenced Bloom to become a professional actor. He was in awe of larger-than-life characters -- from Superman to the members of the A-Team -- and knew the only way to become one was to play one on the screen.
At 16, Bloom relocated to London and performed with the National Youth Theatre for two seasons before winning a scholarship to train with the British American Drama Academy. At the conclusion of his term with the group, he played the lead in A Walk in the Vienna Woods, and secured an agent. This led to small roles on British television and an appearance in Brian Gilbert's Wilde (1997). Wishing to further his education, Bloom then enrolled at London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama (the alma mater of Ewan McGregor, Joseph Fiennes, and Ben Chaplin, among others). There, he acted in several plays, including Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Chekov's Three Sisters, and Sophocles' Antigone.
While still in school, Bloom was trying to make it onto a friend's rooftop terrace when he fell three stories and broke his back. The accident almost paralyzed the actor, but surgery let him walk out of the hospital on crutches. Soon afterward, all his peers auditioned for coveted roles in the upcoming The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The extensive and selective casting process took place in every English-speaking country. Bloom good-naturedly tried out for the role of Faramir, a character introduced in the second film, The Two Towers (2002). After meeting with the project's director, Peter Jackson, Bloom was not cast as Faramir. Instead, Jackson asked that he read for the part of Legolas Greenleaf, a much more prominent figure who is featured in all three films. The director offered Bloom the role a few weeks later, only two days before the burgeoning star graduated from drama school.
Legolas, Tolkien's warrior elf, has super-human strength, swift reflexes, and heightened sensory awareness. To play him, Bloom trained in archery, swordplay, and horseback riding for two months prior to shooting. He developed a graceful style of combat based on the characters in Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai and worked to manage his posture, poise, and composure. As Legolas, Bloom is immortal, and at 2,931 years old, is a tall, athletic, and skilled fighter of evil -- he truly is larger than life.
After finishing The Lord of the Rings -- all three films, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, were shot simultaneously over 18 months in New Zealand -- Bloom headed to Morocco for a role in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. The film chronicles the horrific Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, in which a "simple" mission left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 73 wounded. Debuting his American accent, Bloom plays a neophyte ranger who breaks his back after falling 70 feet from a helicopter. This combat film opened only a few weeks after The Fellowship of the Ring and received equal acclaim.
Following these blockbusters, Bloom performed in several quirky films with limited releases such as Lullaby of Clubland (2001). But it wouldn't be long before Bloom was blowing up the box-office once again with the 2003 crowd-pleaser The Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Bloom showed up opposite Brad Pitt and Black Hawk Dawn costar Eric Bana in the 2004 historical epic Troy, his intense star-power was unquestionable.
Bloom faced a down year in 2005, failing to match the box office success of Troy with Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. That same year he stepped into the role once occupied by Ashton Kutcher in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (a romantic comedy opposite screen heartthrob Kirsten Dunst), but the film never recovered from the bad press it received after its initial film festival screening, failed to find an audience in theaters, and was unpopular with critics. Bloom rebounded one year later by returning with the other principles in back-to-back filmed sequels for Pirates of the Caribbean, the first of which, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, shattered box office records for opening day and opening weekend, and became the first film to take in one hundred million dollars in just two days. It will hardly strike one as prescient, then, that industry insiders and the trades were advance prepping Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End as one of the most lucrative releases of 2007, possibly of any year. That installment finds Bloom's Will Turner, Knightley's Elizabeth Swann, and Geoffrey Rush's Captain Barbosa setting out to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow from the mental tortures of Davy Jones's Locker, and ultimately battling Pirate Sao-Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) beyond the literal end of the world, where the seas fall off into an empty void.
In the mean time, however, Bloom shifted gears, turning away from epic action and giving romantic comedy a sophomore try after the lackluster Elizabethtown. Bloom essayed a small supporting role in the Alex Keshishian-directed Love and Other Disasters (2006), about a fashion editor for Vogue Paris (Brittany Murphy) who attempts to play matchmaker between two gay men (Matthew Rhys, Santiago Cabrera). ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Orlando Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine (née Copeland), was born in the British section of Kolkata, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, who was a physician and surgeon. Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland.[4] Bloom's maternal grandmother's family lived in Tasmania, Australia and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent.[1][5] During his childhood, Bloom was told that his father was his mother's husband, South African-born Jewish anti-Apartheid novelist Harry Saul Bloom; but when he was thirteen (nine years after Harry's death), Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend.[6] Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school,[7] was made Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death.[6] Bloom, who is named after the 16th century composer Orlando Gibbons,[1] has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.
Bloom was raised in the Church of England.[8] As a child, Orlando managed to get through The King's School Canterbury and St Edmund's School in Canterbury despite his dyslexia.[6][9] He was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes.[6] In 1993, he moved to London to follow a two year A Level course in Drama, Photography and Sculpture at Fine Arts College, Hampstead. He then joined the National Isa Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy.[10] Bloom began acting professionally with television roles in episodes of Casualty and Midsomer Murders,[6] and subsequently made his film debut in Wilde (1997), opposite Stephen Fry, before entering the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting.
Career
Bloom's first appearance on the screen was as a rent boy in the 1997 film Wilde - he had a small part. Two days after graduating from Guildhall in 1999,[11] he was cast in his first major role, playing Legolas in The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003).[10] He had originally auditioned for the part of Faramir, who doesn't appear until the second movie but the director, Peter Jackson, cast him as Legolas instead. While shooting a scene, he broke a rib after falling off a horse, but eventually recovered and continued shooting.[12] At the same time, Bloom also played a brief role in the war film Black Hawk Down as PFC. Todd Blackburn. The success of both The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Black Hawk Down transformed Bloom from an unknown actor into one of world's best-known celebrities.[who?] In 2002, he was chosen as one of the Teen People "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" and was named People's hottest Hollywood bachelor in the magazine's 2004 list.[10] All members of the cast of the Rings films were nominated for Best Ensemble Acting at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for three years in a row, finally winning in 2003 for the third film, The Return of the King. Bloom has also won other awards, including European Film Awards, Hollywood Festival Award, Empire Awards and Teen Choice Awards, and has been nominated for many others. Most of Bloom's box office successes have been as part of an ensemble cast.[3]
Bloom next starred opposite Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was a blockbuster hit during the summer of 2003. After the success of Pirates, Bloom next took to the screen as Paris, the man who effectively started the Trojan War, in the 2004 Spring blockbuster, Troy opposite Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Peter O'Toole. He subsequently played the lead roles in Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown (both 2005). In 2006, Bloom starred in sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and in the independently made Haven, of which he was also executive producer. In the same year he was one of the guest stars in the sitcom Extras, in which he portrayed an exaggeratedly arrogant, narcissistic version of himself who had a great loathing for Johnny Depp (his co-star in Pirates of the Caribbean); Bloom pushed for Extras to go further by making his part unlikeable, and contributed to the gag about him admiring Depp out of sheer jealously, that Depp was far more talented than he was, not to mention rated higher than him on the 'top hottest' charts.[13] Also in 2006, Bloom was the most searched male on Google News.[6] As of May 2007, Bloom has appeared in four of the top 15 highest grossing films of all time.[11]
Bloom's most recent film role is in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, released on 24 May 2007. Bloom, who had intended to become a stage actor after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, had stated that he would to like to leave films for a time and instead appear in stage roles,[10] and is "avidly looking for the right sort of material that [he] can do something with"[14] and go "back to basics".[15] During the summer of 2007,he appeared in a London revival of In Celebration, a play by David Storey.[15][16] His character was one of three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary.[17] On 24 August 2007, he made his first ever TV commercial appearance on late-night Japanese TV, promoting the Uno brand of cosmetics maker Shiseido. A "one night only", 2-minute version of the Sci-Fi themed commercial kicked off the product's marketing campaign.[18] Orlando Bloom and Kanye West are rumoured to be starring in the 2010 remake of "Jesus Christ: Superstar". He was also one of the four main actors voted for on Stephenie Meyer's website to portray Edward Cullen in the 2008 movie Twilight. However, he was considered too old to realistically play the part. This was also said of Henry Cavill who was Meyer's first choice. In 2008 he was slimed at the Kid's Choice Awards, what Jack Black called, "The biggest slime in history!"[citation needed] In 2008 he signed on to play a small role in the British film An Education[19] but dropped out to take the lead in Johnny To's film Red Circle.[20] Also in 2009, he was one of many stars to appear in New York, I Love You, which contained twelve short films in one.
Personal life
Bloom in 2008
Bloom has said that he tries "not to exclude [himself] from real life as much as possible".[6] He is a Manchester United fan and lives in London.[21] During filming in Morocco for Kingdom of Heaven, Bloom rescued and adopted a dog, Sidi (a black Saluki mix with a white mark on his chest).[22] Bloom is a practising Buddhist.[11] In 2004, he became a full member of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren.[23][24] Bloom has also been a part of Global Green, an environmental company, since the early 2000s.[3] As part of his environmental involvement, he has renovated his London home to use solar panels, incorporate recycled materials, and utilize energy efficient lightbulbs.[3][6] Bloom has been approached by UNICEF to act as an international ambassador.[3] Bloom met American actress Kate Bosworth outside a coffee shop in 2002, where he was introduced to her by a mutual friend. He met her again at the premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers later that year. The two had an "on-and-off relationship"[6] from 2002 until splitting up in September 2006.[25][26]
Bloom has sustained several injuries: he broke his left arm and cracked his skull three times, broke his nose while playing rugby union, broke his right leg skiing in Switzerland, broke his left leg in a motorbike crash, broke his right wrist while snowboarding.[11] He also broke his back when he slipped trying to reach a roof terrace of a friend's house and fell three floors.[28]
In late 2007, Bloom began dating Australian model Miranda Kerr.[29] In 2008, Bloom actively supported Barack Obama, also volunteering phone canvassing work in California.[30]
On 13 July 2009, at approximately 3:00a.m., four hooded teenagers broke into the Hollywood Hills home of Orlando Bloom and stole $3,000,000 worth of possessions. The burglars, dubbed the “bling ring”, have targeted the homes of young celebrities. Two of the four have been arrested and are awaiting trial. Most of Bloom’s stolen items have been retrieved.[32]
On 12 October 2009 Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He has been involved in the organisation since 2007 and has visited schools and villages in Nepal in support of sanitation and education progammes.[33]
