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He's everyone's
favorite elf and the hottest young actor in Hollywood. Now here
comes the Orlando onslaught : five more films. This pin-up pirate
has found the treasure. Orlando Bloom is
multitasking. He chomps his way through a green apple, then
flosses his teeth and flirts with a makeup artist - all while
philosophizing about his "craft," noting the absence of
reality in an actor's life and lamenting the homesickness that can
hit, even here in sunny Malta, where he's filming Troy - Wolfgang Petersen's adaptation of the Iliad. Mid-floss, Bloom
pauses, cocks his head, smiles and says : "But I'm 26. I'm in
the prime of my life. What do I have to complain about ?"
Not much. No star is rising faster than his. Of course the boy
from Canterbury, England, has worked hard to propel it. He's had a
packed shooting schedule during the past two years, as his role as
the elf Legolas in The Lord of the Rings has turned him into a
teen heartthrob and a sure-fire box-office draw. And in the next
nine months, audiences will get to see the latest results of his
relentless workload. First up is the well-reviewed Pirates of the
Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl, which opens across Europe
this month. Then comes the Aussie outlaw-gang flick Ned Kelly at
the end of September, followed by The Calcium Kid, a spoofy comedy
with Bloom in his first starring role, and one last elfin turn in
The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King. Finally, next May,
comes Troy. You don't need to be a lovestruck teenage girl to
notice that Bloom is one of the hottest talents in the business.
In Pirates he plays Will Turner, who, with his olive skin and
wispy goatee, must be the best-looking swordsmith in the West
Indies. Fueled by love, Turner sets out with Captain Jack Sparrow
(Johnny Depp) to rescue damsel-in-corseted-distress Elizabeth
Swann (Keira Knightley) from dastardly pirate Captain Barbossa
(Geoffrey Rush). When you watch Bloom parrying onscreen, you see
shades of pirate-movie icon Errol Flynn - a natural. But Bloom
was actually the last lead to be cast. "We really needed
somebody who could hold his own as the love interest-Errol Flynn
character, so the audience wouldn't think Keira was going to end
up with Johnny Depp," says director Gore Verbinski. Rush, who
had also worked on Ned Kelly, suggested Bloom, and Verbinski set
up a dinner with him and Knightley. During the meal, Verbinski
recalls, "I just kept looking at them across the table and
thought, 'This could work.'"
It does - on several levels. Bloom and Knightley make a sweet - and so gorgeous
- couple. And Pirates gave Bloom the chance
to work with his hero, playing the earnest straight man to Depp's
camp, wisecracking swashbuckler : "I can guarantee any actor
my age would say Johnny Depp is the guy." Bloom also
recognized this as more than just his biggest part so far in a
major movie. "I talked to my manager," he says,
"about the fact that Pirates would open a bigger door to the
American market than other films I'd worked on."
He was right. Pirates' take at the U.S. box office is nearing $200
million. But how big a door does he think he needs ? He's already
got Hollywood at his service. Troy director Petersen explains
Bloom with a single word: "Beautiful." Verbinski thinks
the actor's appeal is that he's "beautiful and accessible. As
cool as Orlando can be, there is also something there you can
relate to," he says. "He has the ability to create
characters we love to watch, yet he doesn't isolate us."
And how they love to watch. "Everywhere on the Net, it was,
'Yeah, we love Frodo, but who's that elf ?'" says Jasparina
Mahyat, 36, a Singaporean wife and mother who spends seven hours a
day maintaining Orlando Bloom Multimedia (orlandomultimedia.net).
Younger fans paper their bedroom walls with posters. They kiss
their Orli pillowcases ($9.99 on eBay) goodnight. And they flock
to online message boards like "Orlando Bloom Is 100%
Buff" to read and post news. (And gossip — is he, like,
really going out with Kate Bosworth, that blond girl from Blue
Crush ? He won't say.) According to the search engine Lycos, Bloom
has owned the title of most popular male actor online since
January 2002, getting more searches than any other — even his
Troy costar Brad Pitt. (Bloom still trails Angelina Jolie and
Jennifer Lopez in the overall stakes.) All
this attention "makes me nervous", Bloom says, which
may explain why he often seems guarded, even overrehearsed, in
interview, as if he took a class while studying at London's
storied Guildhall called "The Answers a Young Actor Gives
Upon Achieving a Measure of Fame." He's tried hard to
balance his need for privacy with a desire to please fans - at Pirates'
European premiere, last month in London, he kept the audience
inside the cinema waiting for half and hour while he signed
autographs and kissed swooning girls. "Celebrity and
stardom are never things I wanted," he says. "To
ackonwledge that's what's happening is odd. To admit it to
yourself, that seems wrong." But
he's hardly unprepared; he had the acting bug since childhood.
At Guildhall - alma mater of Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes -
Bloom's focus was stage. He appeared in a raft of productions,
including classics like Antigone, Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya,
and says, "I had every intention of going onto the
stage." Lord
Of The Rings took him onto a much bigger stage than he'd
imagined, and Bloom still says that the 15-month shoot in New
Zealand was the greatest thrill of his life. But The Calcium Kid
"was creatively the most rewarding experience I've had —
loads of dialogue, exercising muscles that had been lying
dormant." It is his first chance to carry a film. He plays a
milkman and amateur boxer who finds himself up against the world
champion. Bloom is glad that fans like Pirates, but says,
"I can only hope the people write me thousands of letters
will go see this. I feel proud of what it meant for me."
Each film teaches unique lessons, "and I'm learning a lot
about my craft," he says. "To come out of school and
to work with the kind of actors I've worked with has given me a
fantastic introduction." His latest challenge is to play Troy's
Paris, who steals another man's wife - the legendary beauty
Helen (Diane Kruger) - and sparks a war. It's a nice change to
play the bad boy, says Bloom. "Will in Pirates and
Legolas, they're obvious hero types. Paris in antihero, and this
is the story of stories." Look
at his projects - ancient Troy, the colonial days of Pirates, time
immemorial in Rings - and one question does come up : Need a
reality check ? "My realities do blur a little," he
says. "This isn't real life. I managed to get home for my
best friend's wedding, and I had this real sense of
achievement." Earlier this summer, he made a move toward
normality by bying his first home, a place in London, partly
because "my mum was losing her mind" with all his
stuff cluttering up her house. He's barely spent any time at
"home" so far, but plans a break after Troy
wraps next month. At
the end of The Lord of the Rings' marathon shoot,
Bloom was given a ring with the
inscription to wherever it may lead. Fans
may look at what he's done and
what he has planned - a possible Pirates sequel, the lead
role in the biopic of Dan Eldon, a photojournalist who was
killed on assignment in Somalia - and marvel at how rapidly his
star has risen. Bloom does, too, sometimes. "I don't want
to be jaded," he says. But he also knows this acting stuff
"is not life or death. You can't take yourself too
seriously. The truth is, we're making films. It's playing. It's
dressing up." Then, break over, he slips into the finest in
Bronze Age breastplate craftsmanship, and steps back onto the
road toward Troy and wherever else his blessed path may
take him. |
