Orlando Bloom

Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Copeland Bloom was born on 13 January 1977 in Canterbury, Kent, England, to Sonia Bloom (née Copeland). He was named after the 16th-century English composer Orlando Gibbons. His older sister is Samantha Bloom. Bloom initially believed his biological father was Harry Bloom, a South African-born anti-apartheid novelist and his mother's husband, who died when Bloom was four years old. At age thirteen, his mother disclosed that his biological father was Colin Stone, Harry Bloom's student and family friend, who served as principal of the Concorde International language school and became Bloom's legal guardian following Harry Bloom's death. Bloom is a cousin of photographer Sebastian Copeland.

Raised in the Church of England, Bloom attended St Peter's Methodist Primary School, followed by the junior school of The King's School, and later St Edmund's School Canterbury. After being identified as dyslexic, he was encouraged by his mother to pursue art and drama. In 1993 he relocated to London to study Drama, Photography, and Sculpture at Fine Arts College, Hampstead. He subsequently joined the National Youth Theatre for two seasons and earned a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Early professional television work included appearances in Casualty and Midsomer Murders. His film debut came in the 1997 release Wilde, opposite Stephen Fry, in which he played a small role. Following that production, he enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in acting in 1999.

Two days after graduating from Guildhall, Bloom was cast as the elf Legolas in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which ran from 2001 to 2003. He had originally auditioned for the role of Faramir before Jackson redirected him to Legolas. During production he broke a rib after falling from a horse but continued filming. The entire cast of the trilogy received Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Ensemble Acting for three consecutive years, winning in 2003 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Concurrent with that production, he appeared in Ridley Scott's war film Black Hawk Down (2001) as PFC Todd Blackburn.

Bloom's subsequent film work spanned multiple genres and large-scale productions. He starred opposite Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), playing Will Turner, a role he reprised in Dead Man's Chest (2006), At World's End (2007), and again in 2017. He portrayed Paris in the 2004 epic Troy, alongside Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Peter O'Toole, and took the lead role of Balian de Ibelin in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (2005). That same year he appeared in Cameron Crowe's romantic comedy Elizabethtown. In 2006 he starred in Haven, on which he also served as executive producer, and made a guest appearance on the British sitcom Extras, portraying an exaggerated version of himself. He played the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers (2011), opposite Milla Jovovich, Logan Lerman, and Christoph Waltz, and reprised the role of Legolas in the second and third installments of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit series (2013–2014). He also appeared in New York, I Love You (2007) and received acclaim for his performance in the Afghanistan War drama The Outpost (2020). From 2019 to 2023, he starred in the Amazon Prime Video fantasy series Carnival Row.

Bloom had long expressed a desire to return to the stage after his film career accelerated. He made his professional stage debut in a West End revival of David Storey's In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre in London in 2007, playing one of three brothers returning home for their parents' fortieth wedding anniversary. He made his Broadway debut in August 2013, starring as Romeo in a production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. He returned to the stage in 2018 in a West End revival of Tracy Letts' Killer Joe.

Beyond his acting work, Bloom was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2009 and received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award in 2015.