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London's most beautiful man
Evening Standard (London)
August 8, 2003

by Annabel Rivkin

I don't want to be a pretty boy,' says Orlando Bloom. 'I'm not interested in celebrity,' he continues. 'I want to be an actor, I've always wanted to be an actor, I like the work.' Well, that's all right, then, because he has worked solidly since being picked by director Peter Jackson to play Legolas Greenleaf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy two days before graduating from drama school.

He seems exhausted and under pressure. Many people would be envious, but he's just discovering that a doubling-daily fan base doesn't just mean reverent adoration, it means becoming public property - everybody claiming that they need to know who you're sleeping with (he's rumoured to be dating Blue Crush star Kate Bosworth) and how much you earn (they say it's £2 million a movie). 'It can be a bit intense and I'm trying to deal with it at the moment. It's a bit of a head-wrecker to be honest. I'm suddenly finding myself saying, "Wait a minute, this is what I want... Isn't it?" '

Just to confirm that the camera doesn't lie, Orlando Bloom is almost girlishly perfect - tanned and tousled, his hands are weighted with silver rings and he shifts and wriggles in navy denim on the sofa. But before I can work out if he's sexy, I'm struck by how young he seems and how isolated he's been. He talks of going on elf and hobbit trips, bungee jumping or canoeing in New Zealand, as though he were talking about second and third years at school, or about Scouts and Brownies.

He admits: 'It's hard to keep it real. When I surface and get to see my mates, that's when I feel most comfortable, but in other environments, premieres and stuff, it's all a bit strange, so I'm in the process of trying to come to terms with that, which is an interesting process. I just want to have a nice, happy life.'

Orlando was born near Canterbury 26 years ago. Until the age of 13, he believed that his father was Harry Bloom, the famous South African anti-apartheid campaigner who wrote a novel, Transvaal Episode, based on racial segregation. Harry Bloom worked with Nelson Mandela, was jailed for his beliefs and eventually moved to England with his wife, Orlando's mother Sonia, for a quieter life. Harry died when Orlando was four and it wasn't until he was a teenager that Orlando was told that his biological father was, in fact, Colin Stone, a close family friend and the man who was made his legal guardian after Harry's death.

Orlando has only recently started talking about this and is not remotely at ease with it yet. He hasn't got his patter sorted out and having stammered over 'my mother's husband' and 'my legal father', finally says: 'I was lucky really, I had two dads. I mean I was four when Harry died so what do you remember when you are four? But obviously he was a really prolific writer and my mother has always spoken really highly of him. He's been a role model for me in my head.'

At 16, Orlando left Kent to come to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, got an agent, did a bit of the usual television - Casualty, London's Burning - and then enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 'At that time the West End was my stamping ground because I lived under the BT Tower - well, not literally, but it was a great scene. I still miss London all the time, my friends, my family, I even miss the weather. I haven't really been around for about three or four years. It's just been a constant toing and froing ever since Rings began.' He's thinking of buying a place in London now - life has been all about hotel rooms since success struck.

Drama school was 'hard work, good but hard'. Presumably made harder by an accident at the end of his second year. 'It was a Sunday afternoon and I'd just had a big roast lunch. I went round to a mate's house in Notting Hill - it had an apartment on the top floor but the door had been warped by the weather and needed kicking open from the outside. There was a roof terrace on the landing below so, without even looking down, I thought I could jump across, but instead I landed on a piece of metal - lead flashing or something - and broke my back. That changed my life, it changed everything.'

For four days in the hospital he was told that he'd never walk again. 'It was the biggest test of my life.' He seems slightly irritated when I ask him to elaborate. 'Well, I could have died. I did, and do, consider myself a physical person, an outdoorsy type and I couldn't contemplate the idea of not living an active life.' He walked out of hospital after 12 days, his recovery a combination of steely will and great medical care.

There was loads of 'bureaucratic red tape and insurance bollocks' before he could return to drama school but, he says, 'I've tried to turn the accident into a positive thing because, otherwise, maybe I wouldn't keep fit in the way that I do.' For the record, as we talk he's eating a very rushed Hollywood-style dinner of steamed fish and spinach. His film roles have required him to be physical, to ride, to shoot both guns and arrows, to sword-fight extensively and generallyto swashbuckle his way around the world and through the ages.

At the moment he is filming Troy directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) in Malta with Brad Pitt. He plays Paris, which is gratifying for him because, rather than a benign pretty boy, it's an anti-heroic character who nicks people's girlfriends and eventually kills Pitt's Achilles --which in terms of sympathy will be a tough one for female audiences.

In Pirates of the Caribbean, a Disney extravaganza which opens tonight, he plays opposite Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Jonathan Pryce, not to mention Keira Knightley. 'Johnny has always been one of my heroes anyway, so either you raise your game or you get left behind, I suppose,' he shrugs.

He identifies with Depp. Perhaps, like the rest of us, he is mesmerised by him and, like Depp, he is cursed with this physical perfection. He also seems reassured by the fact that 'Johnny had to do 21 Jump Street [playing a juvenile heart-throb in a television series]. I mean at this stage of my career I'm not getting the opportunity to play really great characters but it's like a rite of passage.'

For one so young, he's worn quite a selection of costumes, and yet even a long, silken blonde wig and a pirate ponytail/dodgy moustache combo haven't dimmed his charms. What's the look for Brad and him on Troy? 'Oh, it's all togas and sarongs. But as my mate Dom says: "What'sa-rong with that?" ' He laughs. Once again, I think he's very tired.