Orlando Bloom

Bloom initially believed that his biological father was his mother's husband, the South African-born anti-apartheid novelist Harry Bloom (1913–1981), who died when Bloom was four years old.

However, when he was thirteen, Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend.

Stone, the principal of the Concorde International language school, became Orlando Bloom's legal guardian after Harry Bloom's death.

Bloom's mother, Sonia Constance Josephine (née Copeland), was born in Kolkata, India, the daughter of British parents Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon, and Betty Constance Josephine (née Walker), who were from Kent.

Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland.

Bloom's mother's family lived in Tasmania (Australia), Japan, and India.

Bloom was brought up in the Church of England.

He attended St Peter's Methodist Primary School, then the junior school of The King's School before proceeding to St Edmund's School Canterbury.

Bloom was discovered to be dyslexic, and was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes.

Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor.

Bloom was born on 13 January 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, and was named after the 16th-century English composer Orlando Gibbons.

He has an older sister, Samantha Bloom.

After being spurred into action following his school prize submission to panto actor Richard Sieben in 1992, 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 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.

Bloom's first appearance on the screen was in 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 film trilogy (2001–2003).

He had originally auditioned for the part of Faramir, who does not 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.

At the same time, Bloom also played a brief role in Ridley Scott's war film Black Hawk Down as PFC Todd Blackburn.

He made his breakthrough as the character Legolas in The Lord of the Rings film series (2001–03).

Bloom appeared in Hollywood films such as the war film Black Hawk Down (2001), the Australian Western Ned Kelly (2003), the romantic comedy Elizabethtown (2005), and New York, I Love You (2007).

In 2002, he was chosen as one of the Teen People "25 Hottest Stars Under 25", despite him having turned 25, and was named People hottest Hollywood bachelor in the magazine's 2004 list.

Considered by some to be the Errol Flynn of his time, he gained further notice appearing in epic fantasy, historical, and adventure films, notably as Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–07, 2017), Paris in Troy (2004), Balian de Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers (2011).

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 Lord of the Rings: 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.

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 Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and Cameron Crowe's 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 unlikable, and contributed to the gag about him admiring Depp out of sheer jealousy, that Depp was far more talented than he was, not to mention rated higher than him on the 'top hottest' charts.

Also in 2006, Bloom was the most searched male on Google News.

He made his professional stage debut in In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 2007 and starred in a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in 2013.

In 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

He reprised his role in The Hobbit film series (2013–14).

In 2015 he received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award.

He returned to the theatre in a West End revival of Tracy Letts' Killer Joe in 2018.

He also starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Carnival Row (2019–2023).

In 2020 he gained acclaim for the Afghanistan War drama film The Outpost (2020).