Orlando Bloom

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 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, 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. 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.