January 13th, 2008 - Happy Birthday Orlando Bloom!

He had his break-through role in the early 2000s as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy of films, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Troy, Elizabethtown, and Kingdom of Heaven.

Bloom most recently appeared in the sequels Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Bloom recently had his West End debut in In Celebration at the Duke of Yorks Theatre, St Martins Lane, which ended its run on September 15th, 2007.

Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Copeland, was born in Calcutta, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon. Bloom’s maternal grandmother’s family has lived in Tasmania, Australia and India, and are of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. Bloom had thought that his father was 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, and the principal of the Concorde International language school. Stone was made Orlando Bloom’s legal guardian after Harry Bloom’s death. Bloom, who is named after the 17th century composer Orlando Gibbons, has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.

Bloom was not academic or athletic as a child, and managed to struggle through St Edmund’s School in Canterbury despite his dyslexia. He was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes. In 1993, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Bloom began acting professionally with television roles in episodes of Casualty and Midsomer Murders, 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. In 1998, he fell three stories while trying to reach the roof of terrace of a friend’s house, and was told he would not regain the ability to walk. However, he made a recovery and was able to walk out of the hospital on crutches within twelve days. Bloom had steel plates inserted into his backbone to support it, which have since been removed, except for a single screw. He regularly practices yoga and Pilate’s to strengthen his back.

Bloom’s first appearance on the screen was a small role as a rent boy in the 1997 film Wilde. Two days after graduating from Guildhall in 1999, he was cast in his first major role, playing Legolas in The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003).

He had originally tried out 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.

Bloom has said that he tries “not to exclude [himself] from real life as much as possible”. He is a Manchester United fan and lives in London. 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). Bloom is a practicing Buddhist.

Bloom has a tattoo of the Elvish word for “nine” on his right wrist, a reference to his involvement in the Lord of the Rings and the fact that his character was one of the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring. The other actors of “The Fellowship” (Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Billy Boyd, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, and Elijah Wood) got the same tattoo with the exception of John Rhys-Davies whose stunt double got the tattoo instead.

Bloom has sustained several injuries: he broke his left arm and cracked his skull while falling out of a tree, 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. He also broke his back when he slipped trying to reach a roof terrace of a friend’s house and fell three floors.

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