Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He made his breakthrough as the character Legolas in The Lord of the Rings film series. He reprised his role in The Hobbit film series. Considered 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, Paris in Troy (2004), Balian de Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers (2011).
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 2020 he gained acclaim for the Afghanistan War drama film The Outpost (2020). He also starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Carnival Row (2019–2023).
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. He returned to the theatre in a West End revival of Tracy Letts' Killer Joe in 2018. In 2009, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 2015 he received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award.
Early life
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.
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 Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon, and Betty Constance Josephine (née Walker). Through her, Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland. Bloom's mother's family lived in Tasmania (Australia), Japan, and India, and were of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent.
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. 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.
