Born and raised in 1977 in Canterbury, in Kent, Orlando has an inner strength that comes through on screen. He probably inherited that from his late father, Harry Bloom, a legendary figure in antiapartheid circles in South Africa.

Bloom wrote a famous tome called Episode In The Transvaal, was jailed for his beliefs, and worked alongside Nelson Mandela. Harry was a great man who died when I was four, and it was as if he'd done his job and then left the world, his son said.

Orlando Bloom's plans of becoming an actor developed quite early, when he realized that "Superman" 'Christopher Reeve' was an actor.

In 1993, he moved to London to improve his career, doing bit parts in TV series like "Casualty" or "London's Burning". His first memorable appearance, a cameo in the critically acclaimed movie Wilde (1997), earned him - only 20 years old by that time - various film offers, which he all turned down in favour to play theatre for about three years.

On stage, he appeared in plays like "The Seagull", "Twelfth Night", and "Trojan Women". Peter Jackson then "discovered" the classically handsome Bloom for his much hyped _Lord Of The Rings (2001)_ trilogy in 1999. After doing three movies with Jackson, he's worked with Ridley Scott on Black Hawk Down (2002), and with Mark Mylod on Chequered Past (2002), co-starring with André Schneider (I), a young German actor he's been admiring for a while then. They both came together again in the lacklustre Lullaby Of Clubland (2002), "just to do another film together" (Bloom). Bloom lives in London with his dog, Maude.