Pirates star Orlando Bloom returns to theatre for a while

2 June, 2007:

Orlando Bloom says he has decided to keep off movies temporarily after the huge success of two huge Hollywood trilogies – Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean.

In an interview to Associated Press, Orlando Bloom, 30, exclaimed: “It’s been an incredible ride.”

Bloom is planning to return to the theatre, the London stage, to appear in David Storey’s play In Celebration.

Bloom described the journey that catapulted him straight from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama into the glitzy Hollywood as “huge and surreal.”

As a child, he was inspired by movies and theatre as well as the street performers in his hometown of Canterbury in England. Bloom chose his career as a child.

Orlando Bloom joined London’s National Youth Theatre and won a scholarship to train with the British Drama Academy. Though he learned his craft on the stage, his first assignment after graduation made him a movie star – the role of the brave elf Legolas in Lord of the Rings.

Since then, Orlando Bloom has become a heartthrob. People magazine selected him as one of the ‘Hottest Bachelors’ and one of the ‘50 Most Beautiful.’

At the premiere of the third part of the trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, at Disneyland recently, women and girls reportedly swooned as Orlando Bloom walked the red carpet. Some of the female fans had painted their faces and T-shirts with ‘I love Orlando Bloom.’

Bloom’s close association with Hollywood gave him an instant potential as a leading man.

Gore Verbinski, director of Pirates, in which Bloom played the character Will Turner, says: “Bloom brought the perfect blend of innocence and gravity to his character. In the first Pirates movie, I needed somebody who could be two things: one, a blossoming leading man, but also a little bit awkward, then growing and ultimately becoming as complex and as dark as the rest of the characters in the movie.”

Orlando Bloom’s rising clout in Hollywood has already brought him plenty of opportunities – from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown to the chance to return to the stage.

Bloom is also playing a prominent role is environmental activism. He recently returned from a trip to Antarctica, where he saw how “tragically fragile and precious” the ice caps are.