Don’t be fooled by his bohemian dress and freethinking ways (or by the fact that he’s very, very good in a very unperiod new movie): Orlando Bloom is the Errol Flynn of our time Orlando Bloom sits (eating unripe blueberries), having his morning tea on what could be the patio of a modest little house anywhere in the world. But little things everywhere hint that this is a partly fictional realm. Bloom is swathed in one of the long scarves he favors, covered in trinkets, and wearing combat-weight black boots, but because he has become so extraordinarily well-known for playing […]

Everybody’s taken with this Troy boy. … Troy’s young lover has been ranked higher on Yahoo!’s Buzz Index than Brad Pitt, Viggo Mortensen and Johnny Depp, People’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive. That’s even more impressive when you consider that Bloom rose to the top while acting alongside those actors in Troy, The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, respectively. Who else would even get noticed next to those guys? Mortensen, for one, is happy to hand off the heartthrob torch: Any phone numbers women pass him, “I give to Orlando,” he says. Bloom has explained that he […]

The action star of Kingdom of Heaven is dyslexic, accident-prone, in pain from a dozen broken bones, intimidated by heartthrob fame and a Buddhist ready to get in your face if you don’t let him live life to the fullest Orlando Bloom drops anchor about 200 yards off the shore of Bequia, an island just south of where he and Johnny Depp are filming back-to-back sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. Though his personal assistant and trainer decide to take a leisurely kayak ride to shore, Bloom chooses to swim. A race to the beach is suggested to make things […]

Growing up in the historic English cities of Canterbury and London may explain why dashing young actor Orlando Bloom is so well-suited for epic films like the upcoming Kingdom of Heaven. Once upon a time, in the verdant county of Kent, in the city of Canterbury, England, a boy was christened Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom, after 17th-century composer Orlando Gibbons. Alas, this Orlando, being from Canterbury, where Geoffrey Chaucer based his famously unfinished tales, would soon take a more dramatic turn with his life. Having excelled in local plays at an early age, he moved to London at 16 to […]

Orlando Bloom still blends, especially in the lobby of New York’s mercilessly hip Mercer Hotel, where one would be tempted to hand the young actor some luggage or enlist him to hail a cab. Wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, hair scrunched off his broad forehead, he does not look like the next big thing, and yet that is precisely what he is, a willowy 26-year-old who has risen to international stardom. “It is incredible,” Bloom admits. “I mean, I’m stumped by it. I moved to London, went to drama school, got Lord of the Rings. I never expected this. […]