Orlando Bloom Absolutely Hated A Huge Role – ‘I Didn’t Want To Do The Movie’
Orlando Bloom really hated making one of his giant blockbuster movies, and he made that quite clear during a recent interview with Variety.
During the video series “Know Your Lines” for the outlet — where stars are given a quote from one of their projects and asked to identify it correctly — Bloom was given a line that read, “Do you love me, brother? Will you protect me from any enemy?” Bloom guessed that it was from his 2005 film “Kingdom of Heaven” or one of the original three “Lord of the Rings” movies before he was told that it was from 2004’s historical epic “Troy.” Apparently, Bloom doesn’t remember “Troy” for a reason — he hated the job.
“Oh my god, ‘Troy,'” Bloom said, laughing. “Wow. I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain by the way.”
According to the actor, he knows people love “Troy,” but he definitely doesn’t. “So many people love that movie, but for me playing that character was just like—” before making a motion as if he was slitting his own throat. Immediately, Bloom then wondered if this was all above board before continuing to absolutely trash “Troy.” “Am I allowed to say all of these things?” Bloom mused. “I didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t want to play this character.”
Orlando Bloom knows that Troy had a star-studded cast, but didn’t enjoy making the movie
So who did Orlando Bloom play in “Troy?” Fresh off huge projects like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the unexpected Disney smash hit “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” Bloom played Paris in Wolfgang Petersen’s retelling of the Trojan War. For those who might not be super familiar with Greek history, Parias the Prince of Troy and younger brother to Eric Bana’s crown prince Hector, the leader of the massive Trojan army.
Bloom, to be fair, did say he loved working with huge actors on the film, but that his role just felt completely silly to him. “The movie was great,” Bloom said. “It was Brad [Pitt]. It was Eric [Bana] and Peter O’Toole. But how am I going to play this character? It was completely against everything I felt in my being.”
From there, Bloom addressed one moment in Troy” that he says was particularly ridiculous: “At one point it says Paris crawls along the floor having been beaten by somebody and holds his brother’s leg. I was like, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ One of my agents at the time said, ‘But that’s the moment that will make it!’ And I completely fell for that line of a agent. I think that’s why I blanked that from my mind.”
What has Orlando Bloom been doing since Troy?
Luckily, Orlando Bloom has had plenty of opportunities to make projects that he (hopefully) liked a lot more than “Troy” throughout his lengthy career. After getting his big break as Legolas the elf in the critically beloved “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and Will Turner in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” Bloom’s career took off, and both of those franchises ended up providing a ton of continued opportunities as well. Bloom reprised his role as Legolas in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” and that movie’s direct sequel “The Battle of the Five Armies,” and he appeared in three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films after “Curse of the Pearl,” including “Dead Man’s Chest,” “At World’s End,” and “Dead Men Tell No Tales.”
More recently, Bloom has shown up in films like 2023’s “Gran Turismo” and television shows like Amazon Prime’s original series “Carnival Row;” on the latter, Bloom played main character Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate for two seasons from 2019 to 2023. Hopefully, as his career has continued, he’s had much more positive experiences than he did on “Troy.”