NEW YORK -- Save for a throwaway line in the Oscar Wilde film, Wilde, in 1997, English actor Orlando Bloom made his film debut in The Lord Of The Rings as a kid fresh out of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Admiring his sweet face, fair complexion and stately bearing, Peter Jackson cast the 24-year-old actor as the Elf prince Legolas, the only Elf among the Fellowship of heroes who drive the story in the first instalment of the trilogy.

"I feel really privileged to be an actor, to be paid to do something I love," says Bloom.

He grew up in Canterbury and had dreamed of performing since the day that he figured out, as a child, that Christopher Reeve was an actor playing Superman, not the real Man of Steel. Playing Legolas turned out to be his own adventure in make-believe in a big time fashion.

"It's great fun getting dressed up in clothes and sitting on a horse and riding around with a bow and arrow. Why would you not be humble about that and say: 'This is great!'?"