Not since Brad Pitt's bit breakthrough as the Hot Hottie in the movie "Thelma & Louise" (1992) has a little minor role in a movie burned so on women's minds, as much as the bowshooting elf warrior 'Legolas' in "The Lord of The Rings". Behind the blond wig, the blue contact lenses and the fantastic costume hides today's biggest sex symbol, the English actor Orlando Bloom.

There are many unreal and fantastic things about the 25-year old actor from Canterbury in England. Alone the fabulous name 'Orlando Bloom' is like taking it out of a fantasy world. Orlando Bloom is his real name, named after the hero in Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando: A Biography". But his life has also been everything else than boring. Orlando is a thorough-bred adrenaline junkie, loving everything with speed, excitement and high danger: Countless accidents within Surfing, Bungyjumping, Snowboarding, Parachute jumping and other extreme sports have until now cost him several broken ribs, nose, both legs, an arm, a wrist, a finger and a toe plus three skull fractures. Some years ago he broke his back, and a lot indicated that he never would walk again, but as he says himself, a miracle came true and two weeks later he walked out of the hospital. The doctors couldn't say how it was possible. Maybe you just have to remember that Legolas is 2931 years old, and that elves are immortal!

EYE CANDY FOR WOMEN
Anyway, the most fantastic in Orlando Bloom's life is his phantom career as an actor. The role as Legolas has meant that he would go from being a totally unknown and inexperienced acting student in London to the most-searched name in the world on the big internet searchplaces, Google and Lycos, in the last 12 months. And, he has been chosen as the years best new acting name at both MTV Movie Awards and the movie magazine Empire, just helped prize giving. And at Sirene's editorial office, we can say that Orlando Bloom is the most popular name in the reader's letters and e-mails. And it's only because of a little bald mino rrole - even that "bald" maybe isn't the best word to use, when you shall describe that sex appeal, that the elf Legolas has on the world's women. With his waistlong, blond hair and the small, feminine and really pale complexion, the Legolas-figure didn't, on any ways, match with the figure of sexy stars you see on movies right now.

But the female watchers saw through the long haired Bon-Jovi look and saw at once, what no man could understand. Behind the green elf-costume and the bow, were an actor with hypnotizing attraction on women.

HARD LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP
In the real life, Orlando Bloom is a muscular guy with a long body, plump dark hair, high cheekbones and sensitive brown eyes that send a mixtured signal of vulnerability and strength to everybody. And then he's single. Even though "The Lord of The Rings" was his big breakthrough, the film was the indirect reason that he experienced his first big defeat in love. 18 months of separation (the time taken at New Zealand) was more than the relationship to his, at that time, girlfriend Jemma Kid could survive. The rumors also says, that they were engaged, but Orlando won't say it's right. But he hasn't on any ways turned his back to love.
"There isn't anything better than the feeling, when you starts to fall in love with a girl, when you can't stop thinking of, when you're going to see her again. That I love above ev'rything else. Women are fantastic. They deserve to be cuddled and respected."

DADDY WAS A PATRIOT
The woman that Orlando Bloom loves above all else is his mother. When Orlando was four years old, his father died, and because of that he developed a very close relationship to his mother. She was a daily leader of a linguistic school for foreign students in Canterbury. But if you ask him what person that had most influence on his life, the answer is the father, Harry Bloom.

"He was a legendary person in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and he even sat in jail some time because of his work for black people's rights. He worked side by side with Nelson Mandela. He was a remarkable man who gave everything for a case and when his work was finished, he died, just like if he knew his duty had completed."

For a very young actor like Orlando Bloom, could this comet-like change to a superstar and hunted sex symbol be a surrealist experience? But he totally takes it calmly.

"I think I'm rather anonymous when I walk around in the city. I have short, dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin, and somewhere people are looking unconsciously, for a longhaired, blond, blue-eyed guy, when you say Orlando Bloom."

However, he can be a little scared of all the websites on the internet about him. "It really scares me. So many people are concerned about me, and it is really spooky. Internet is a spooky thing. I am a total technophobia, and that's the reason why, I don't have e-mail."

SEXY MALE PROSTITUTE
You really understand him when he talks about being unrecognizable. Many movie watchers were surprised when they got to know that Orlando Bloom also had been acting in Ridley Scott's shaking war drama "Black Hawk Down". Athletic and in military clothes, it actually was hard to recognize the blond elf warrior as a top, trained, picked soldier. But the role in master producer Scott's war movie is on the same time a signal that you're not dealing with a 'one-hit-wonderboy'. The big guys (producers...) have seen the potential, and the offers are just rolling in. And that is based on two minor roles. Or, actually three. Because back in 1997, Orlando Bloom showed his talent, when he played a male prostitue in the english movie "Wilde" about author Oscar Wilde's life. And here the likenesses with his colleagues Joaquin Phoenix and Ewan McGregor show themselves. Both actors tried early in their careers, powers with roles as prostitute and drug addicts (Phoenix in "8MM" and McGregor in "Trainspotting"). Just like these two actors, Orlando Bloom - his friends call him 'Orli' - this brittleness and boyishness in his masculine charisma gives him the possibility to likely act as everything from male prostitute to totally women charmer.

Enjoy him as Legolas in the new "The Lord of The Rings - The Two Towers". "The Lord Of The Rings - The Two Towers" premiered in the cinemas the 18th of December (2002).

INSIDE ORLANDO

• Orlando has three tattoos on his body. One of them is the number '9' on elvish. All the nine actors in the fellowship from "The Lord of The Rings - The Fellowship of The Ring" got that tattoo as a eternal memory of their experiences under the production on New Zealand.
  
• Orlando has a two-year older sister named Samantha.
  
• Orlando wanted to be an actor when he as young found out that Superman actually was an actor named Christopher Reeve.
  
• Orlando has assisted in a commertial for the American clothesline 'The Gap' together with Kate Beckinsale ("Pearl Harbour"). The commertial was directed by Cameron Crowe ("Jerry Maguire", Almost Famous").
  
• Orlando wanted to be a photographer if he didn't become an actor.
  
• Orlando's first 'crush' was the actress Linda Evans (Krystle in "Dollars").
  
• Orlando's first live concert was "Jamiroquai".
  
• Orlando's most known statement: "Frankly, if I get the chance to kiss someone in a movie, they wouldn't need to pay me at all."

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