Info
- Full Name: Orlando Bloom
- Date of birth: January 13, 1977 (49 years old)
- Location: Canterbury, Kent, England
- Country: UK
Orlando Bloom has been active for 24 years, participating in 26 movies that average a 6.9/10 score.
Biography
In 1998, aged 21, Orlando Bloom was climbing a drainpipe to get onto a friend's roof terrace in London when the pipe gave way. He fell three floors and crushed his spine. For four days doctors told him he would probably never walk again. His spinal cord had survived by a hair, he recovered, and he walked out of hospital on crutches. He still describes that accident as the line that splits his life in two, and he was back on a set within a couple of years.
He was born in Canterbury, Kent, on 13 January 1977, and his mother Sonia named him after the Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons. He grew up believing his father was Harry Bloom, the South African novelist and anti apartheid campaigner who died when Orlando was four. At thirteen he was told that his biological father was in fact Colin Stone, a family friend who had been his legal guardian since Harry's death.
He is dyslexic, which made his years at St Edmund's School in Canterbury hard going and pushed him towards art and drama classes. In 1993 he moved to London, joined the National Youth Theatre and won a scholarship to the British American Drama Academy. Guildhall School of Music and Drama came next, and he graduated in 1999. By then he had already made his screen debut with a small part in 'Wilde' (1997), the Oscar Wilde biopic led by Stephen Fry.
Legolas, or a career that started in two days
Two days after leaving Guildhall he got the part of Legolas. He had auditioned for Faramir, but Peter Jackson saw him elsewhere and sent him to New Zealand for the eighteen month shoot of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' (2001), 'The Two Towers' (2002) and 'The Return of the King' (2003).
The elf archer brought instant fame and a Screen Actors Guild award for best cast alongside Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler. He cracked a rib falling off a horse mid shoot and carried on working.
The trilogy ended up taking close to three billion dollars and seventeen Oscars between the three films, eleven of them for the finale. Bloom had arrived at 22 with nothing on his CV and came out of it a poster on bedroom walls across the world.
Oddly, the first of his films to actually reach cinemas was not Tolkien but 'Black Hawk Down' (2001), directed by Ridley Scott, in which he plays the soldier who falls out of a helicopter. A small part and, given his own history, a fairly ironic one.
Pirates, Troy and the leading man trap
The second hit landed in 2003, and it came out of a Disneyland ride. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' made him Will Turner, the lovestruck blacksmith set against the Jack Sparrow of Johnny Depp, with Keira Knightley and Geoffrey Rush filling out the picture.
He returned for 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' (2006), which went past a billion dollars with Bill Nighy under the tentacles as Davy Jones and is still the biggest hit he has been in, and 'At World's End' (2007). He came back a decade later for a short appearance in 'Salazar's Revenge' (2017).
With two billion dollar franchises behind him before he turned thirty, the studios put him in anything involving a sword. He was Paris in 'Troy' (2004), for Wolfgang Petersen; the crusader blacksmith of 'Kingdom of Heaven' (2005), his second job for Ridley Scott and a film only rescued years later by the director's cut; the Australian outlaw of 'Ned Kelly' (2003) and the Duke of Buckingham in 'The Three Musketeers' (2011).
The attempt to break the mould was 'Elizabethtown' (2005), the Cameron Crowe romantic comedy with Kirsten Dunst. It went badly: the reviews were brutal and nobody turned up. Dunst's character did leave a mark of sorts, since it prompted the critic Nathan Rabin to coin the phrase manic pixie dream girl, still in use for women written purely to fix a man's life.
Bloom spent the next few years on smaller films, among them 'Love and Other Disasters' (2006), 'New York, I Love You' (2009), 'Sympathy for Delicious' (2010), 'Main Street' (2010) and the thriller 'Unlocked' (2017), none of which travelled far.
Middle earth pulled him back for 'The Hobbit' trilogy, with Legolas turning up in 'The Desolation of Smaug' (2013) and 'The Battle of the Five Armies' (2014) as the son of the elf king played by Lee Pace. The catch is that Legolas is not in Tolkien's book at all: the character was written into the adaptation, with Bloom digitally smoothed out because ten years had passed since the previous shoot.
Theatre, Carnival Row and rougher parts
What he did next says a fair bit about how he sees himself. He went back to the stage in 'In Celebration' at the Duke of York's in 2007, made his Broadway debut at the Richard Rodgers in a modern dress 'Romeo and Juliet' in 2013 opposite Condola Rashad, which the New York Times called a first rate debut, and took on 'Killer Joe' at Trafalgar Studios in 2018, a thoroughly unpleasant part in a thoroughly unpleasant play.
On television he led 'Carnival Row', which Amazon kept on air between 2019 and 2023, a Victorian fantasy about refugee fae, shot mostly in Prague, in which he played inspector Rycroft Philostrate opposite Cara Delevingne and also worked as an executive producer.
His best recent work sits in harder, less glamorous films. He played Captain Ben Keating in 'The Outpost' (2019), about the battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan and based on the book by the journalist Jake Tapper, and a hitman in 'Red Right Hand' (2024). He also turned up in 'Gran Turismo' (2023), voiced Mr Raccoon in 'Peppa's Cinema Party' the following year, and went for laughs in 'Deep Cover' (2025) with Bryan Cranston.
The one that surprised people is 'The Cut', shown at Toronto in 2024 and put into British cinemas by Altitude the following year. He plays an Irish boxer putting himself through a savage weight cut to fight for a title, and he lost more than fifteen kilos in three months to do it. Reviews of the film were lukewarm and reviews of his performance were not.
Buddhism, UNICEF and a much discussed family
He has practised Soka Gakkai Buddhism since 2004 and often points to it as the thing that keeps him steady when work dries up. In October 2009 he was appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, a job that has taken him to Nepal and to Ukraine, first in 2016 and again in 2023, to talk about schooling for displaced children. In 2015 BAFTA gave him its Britannia humanitarian award for that work.
He married the Australian model Miranda Kerr in July 2010, a few months after they got engaged, and their son Flynn was born in January 2011. They separated in October 2013 and have kept the sort of friendly arrangement both of them have held up as a model since.
His relationship with the singer Katy Perry began at a Golden Globes after party in January 2016, broke off for a year, resumed in 2018 and led to an engagement on Valentine's Day 2019. Perry announced the pregnancy in the video for her single 'Never Worn White', and their daughter Daisy Dove was born in August 2020. In July 2025, after nearly a decade together, their representatives announced that they were separating and would focus on co parenting. Bloom addressed it on television months later in one short line: "it's nothing but love".
He has had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 2014 and a diary that keeps filling up. He shot 'Bucking Fastard' for Werner Herzog with Rooney Mara and Kate Mara, has the comedy 'Wizards!' waiting with David Michôd directing, and this summer he started shooting the thriller 'Reset' with Priyanka Chopra.
Meanwhile, cameras are rolling in New Zealand on 'The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum', directed by Andy Serkis with Jackson producing and McKellen, Wood and Lee Pace back on board. Bloom has said more than once that he would put the pointed ears on again without thinking twice. Will anyone call?
Last appearances: movies and tv shows
- Highest-rated movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 9.2
- Lowest-rated movie: New York, I Love You (2009) 3.9
- Highest-rated tv show: Carnival Row (2019) 10
- Lowest-rated tv show: Easy (2016) 5.8
Photos
Videos
Orlando Bloom explains his extreme workout
May 29 2017
December 22 2016