Orlando Bloom Online - Articles anglais

Orlando Bloom thinks LA is intimidating

2011-07-11T21:28:00+01:00

Orlando Bloom thinks Los Angeles is "big and intimidating".

The British actor – who divides his time with wife Miranda Kerr and their six-month-old son Flynn between London and the US city – was overwhelmed when he took a flight out of California and caught a glimpse of the landscape.

He said: "My first overriding memory of LA is flying out of the city to New Zealand to do 'Lord of the Rings' and looking out of the window of the plane thinking it looked big and intimidating.

"A bit scary really – just so vast and bustling."

Despite regarding Los Angeles as his work base, Orlando loves going out into the hills on his bicycle.

He said: "I love being close to nature and being outdoors, so I would have to say my favourite part of LA is the hills or the canyons, which are great for mountain biking."

However, the actor also loves to spend time at home with his family and friends.

Asked to describe a perfect day, he told Tatler magazine: "Having family time, good food, good friends, a nice glass of wine, then winding down with a movie at home."

Source : Musicrooms.net

Orlando Bloom: is he really our greatest movie actor?

2010-07-23T15:58:00+01:00

In the past decade, Orlando Bloom has been in more box-office hits than anyone else. David Gritten draws his own conclusions.

What an interesting week Orlando Bloom’s had. He got married to an Australian model named Miranda Kerr. (Congratulations all round.) And he came out top of a curious list compiled by the UK Film Council, showing that, of all leading British actors, he had made the most appearances in the 200 highest-grossing films of the past decade. (Er, congratulations. I think.)

He was followed by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint (who presumably tied for second place), Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Jonathan Pryce, John Cleese, Ewan McGregor and Christian Bale.

Bloom, 33, wins because he appeared in three Lord of the Rings films as Legolas Greenleaf, and in three Pirates of the Caribbean movies as Will Turner.

But you do wonder about that list and its validity. The test is this: imagine sitting at home, scanning the week’s film listings and saying to your partner/friend/room-mate/whoever: “I see there’s a new film starring (name of actor here). Shall we go?”

Well, you can imagine people saying that about Ewan McGregor. Or Christian Bale. Or even an older person with specialised tastes in film saying it about Christopher Lee.

But most people don’t go to see Harry Potter films because of any one of its young co-stars. They go because it’s the new Harry Potter. And with the greatest respect to Bloom (who seems a pleasant enough sort), they probably went to the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the great story-telling and the phenomenal special effects. They almost certainly went to see three Pirates of the Caribbean movies largely because of a certain Mr Johnny Depp.

Does any of this matter? Only if you follow the reverse logic of the UK Film Council’s list, which implies these actors are box-office gold in their own right. Daniel Radcliffe discovered the shortcomings of that theory in 2007, when his presence in a mediocre Australian coming-of-age film called December Boys was insufficient to save it from disappointing box-office returns and sceptical reviews.

Bloom’s biggest lead role so far was in writer-director Cameron Crowe’s ghastly, self-satisfied, semi-autobiographical Elizabethtown (2005). That flopped too, through no fault of Bloom’s, and deserved to.

In the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Pirates films, the franchise is the thing; the youngish actors in them are essentially bit players. They may yet end up having stellar careers, but it’s by no means certain. Radcliffe’s lead role in Hammer’s upcoming gothic thriller The Woman in Black will be an intriguing test case.

Robert Pattinson was the most recent to find the truth of this proposition. Drag him out of the Twilight franchise, and success is no longer automatic - as the lukewarm audience reception for his recent Remember Me illustrated.

This isn’t the worst thing in the world for any of these actors, who are still making a living beyond the dreams of most of their fellow actors. Just as long as they don’t con themselves into believing they’re bigger than their films. As Orlando Bloom is currently on honeymoon, that thought is hopefully far from his mind.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Orlando Bloom talks on singing, sings on healing in 'Sympathy for Delicious'

2010-01-30T20:03:00+00:00

Interview with the former Pirates of the Caribbean actor, by Katie Hasty.

Orlando Bloom took on his first role as a rock star in the Mark Ruffalo-directed "Sympathy for Delicious," but fans of the actor shouldn't count on him quitting the biz to take on the music world by storm.

"I had a lot of fun. But, no, I don’t think I’m going to be doing an album any time soon," Bloom said at Sundance this week, where the film premiered.

The 33-year-old English cited the Stone Roses' Ian Brown and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis as his inspiration for this role as The Stain in "Sympathy," who, as previously reported, is the fame-whoring, self-important frontman of the band in the film. He takes in main character Dean -- aka Delicious D (Chris Thornton) who can heal people with his hands -- as part of the band in an attempt to rake in publicity.

"I just felt like he could be a really belligerent, egotistical, narcissistic rock star if I placed him in the north of England… no offense.to people in the north of England," he said. "But it just worked really well."

Bloom had a little help from Cedric Bixler from the Mars Volta on singing tips, and it shows: the performance in the film is hyperbolic, borderline operatic. First-time director Ruffalo was a patient director, Bloom said, as "it was amazing to be directed by an actor. Mark’s so sensitive to the process. I was terrified about how to say some of the lines that had been beautifully crafted for the character of The Stain, like 'I am the Lord by wad of cum.'"

Beautiful, yes.

Source: Hitfix.com

The Surprising and Unfair Cinematic Demise of Orlando Bloom

2009-09-18T20:43:00+01:00

The man has a record six movies that have grossed $300 million+ in the US, plus another two $100 million+ earners. His popularity was actually a factor in the success of several of those pictures. He has worked with such directors as Ridley Scott (twice), Cameron Crowe, Peter Jackson (thrice), Wolfgang Petersen, and Gore Verbinski (thrice).

Counting all of his pictures, his eleven films have grossed an average of $207 million (he's averaged $253 million if you only count the mainstream studio pictures). His average opening weekend for said wide releases is $61 million. From 2002 until 2007, he was a big-league heartthrob whose poster adorned the walls of many a teenage girl. He was one of People's 'Sexiest Men Alive' in 2006. Yet Orlando Bloom is nowhere to be seen in today's filmmaking landscape.

So what happened? Did he simply grow tired of fame and/or major scale Hollywood films? The back-to-back schedule of the last two Pirates of the Caribbean films allegedly took quite a toll, as I'd imagine did the back-to-back-to-back shooting schedule of the Lords of the Rings trilogy. Did he grow tired of the critical scorn and retreat to smaller projects that wouldn't be as much under a microscope? What is unusual about the rise and (relative) fall of Orlando Bloom is that his critical downfall was almost entirely due to two things: A) taking major roles in films that looked great on paper but ultimately floundered through no fault of his and B) becoming victim to critics' inexplicable expectations and/or inability to understand what a 'straight man' does in a big-budget adventure film. In essence, he was constantly attacked purely for doing his job, for being an actor first and a movie star second.

Quite a few stars have been burned in the past for signing up for disappointing films that looked like winners on paper. Alicia Silverstone may have been adrift as Batgirl in Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, but would any teenage girl in her right mind have the foresight to turn down such a seemingly golden opportunity? And what of all those knuckleheads who honestly blamed Jake Lloyd for the flaws found in Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace? Did critics and geeks honestly expect young Lloyd to say "Well, as wonderful as the opportunity to play Anakin Skywalker seems on the surface, the script has pacing and exposition issues and I know Mr. Lucas is not the best director of actors, so I cannot trust him to properly direct me in a way that makes up for my inherent inexperience as an performer."? By the same token, no young male actor would consider for one second turning down the lead role in a coming-of-age story written and directed by Cameron Crowe. Yes, the film ended up being Elizabethtown, but is that really Bloom's fault? No actor could have survived a film that was filled with trite voice over and contained a first half which required the lead to talk to himself in monologue for nearly an hour.

Nor is it Orlando Bloom's fault that nearly every critic went into Kingdom of Heaven expecting a sequel to Gladiator. Countless reviews complained that Balin de Ibelin, the thoughtful, war-wary blacksmith, was not the brooding, muscle-bound, vengeful Maximus Decimus Meridius and that Orlando Bloom was not Russell Crowe. Whether or not Kingdom of Heaven is a better movie than Gladiator (I think it so, no matter which cut you're watching) is irrelevant. What was troubling was how few critics (and audience members, few that there were) could comprehend that it was a different movie from Gladiator. If Ridley Scott wanted a Russell Crowe-type character in Kingdom of Heaven, don't you think he would have gone ahead and just cast Russell Crowe again? They've worked together on four occasions (Gladiator, A Good Year, American Gangster, and Body Of Lies), it's obvious that they get along.

This also ties into the other problem that Bloom has faced... being critically torn apart not because of his acting, but because of the content of the character he was playing. In summer 2004, Orlando Bloom took the supporting role of Paris in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Once again, would you turn down a major role in a big-budget sword-and-sandals epic that allowed you to cross swords with Brad Pitt, have sex with Diane Kruger, and share scenes with onscreen father Peter O'Toole? Yet, whatever issues the film does have, I cannot count the number of reviews that criticized Bloom not specifically for his acting, but for his portrayal of Paris as a spineless, selfish, cowardly idiot, a boy who started an epic war because he couldn't keep his pecker in his pants. But guess what people? THAT's the character of Paris. Rather than try to make Paris into a more heroic and sympathetic character, Bloom played him as exactly the sniveling loser that he was.

Bloom's tragic need to actually do his job haunted him even in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. What so many critics and audience members failed to understand is that it was Orlando Bloom's straight-man performance that allowed Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow to exist in the narrative in the first place. Yes, compared with Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom looked pretty dull. But that is the burden of the straight man. A lesser actor would have demanded that he be allowed to be larger-than-life and crowd-pleasingly comedic as well, but Bloom knew that it was his job to counter-balance the off-the-wall antics of Johnny Depp. Because Bloom's Will Turner fulfilled the genre requirement of having a straight-arrow heroic figure, and his relationship with somewhat more-complicated Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) fulfilled the demand for sea-faring romance, Johnny Depp was free to run wild and do whatever he damn-well felt like. If Rob Marshall and the makers of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: At Stranger Tides think they can craft a story completely around Jack Sparrow, they are in for a rude awakening. A Pirates of the Caribbean sequel utterly and completely dominated by Jack Sparrow would be no less grating than a Shrek sequel starring only Donkey.

Even his star-making performance as Legolas Greenleaf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy speaks to his apparent onscreen generosity. After his screen-time-heavy and crowd-pleasing turn in The Two Towers, one might have thought that Legolas would have received more screen-time in Return of the King. Yet save for a single added action beat involve a single elephant, Legolas is barely featured in the third film. I certainly cannot say whether or not Bloom even tried to get more of his footage added to the final cut. But considering his track record, it is likely that Bloom knew that the third film was in no way about the Elfin warrior and thus added screen-time to appease the fan-girls would come only at the cost of the Frodo/Sam and Aragorn-centric narrative.

Yet at the end of 2009, Orlando Bloom sits with not a single major film on the horizon. For playing the straight man in a blockbuster trilogy, he was rewarded not with thanks but with Razzie nominations. For daring to star in a Ridley Scott period-action film and not attempting to retread the more crowd-pleasing predecessor, he and Scott were besot by critical scorn and audience indifference. For having the gall to play a sniveling, sympathetic and unheroic schmuck as sniveling, unsympathetic and unheroic, he was criticized as if that was the fault of his performance rather than the original character. And finally for having the terrible luck to star in Cameron Crowe's worst written and directed movie, he was tainted as the cause of said failure. Orlando Bloom may not be the world's greatest actor, but he has suffered the fate even worse than that of many like him (Keanu Reeves, Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford) who dare to put the movie first and stardom second. By refusing to be larger than the character and larger than the narrative, he was tagged as a wooden performer and banished from Hollywood. For the sake of all who feel that serving the story should come before serving their own career, I hope to see Mr. Bloom back on the silver screen sometime soon. He may not have deserved Oscars, but he deserved more than just our scorn.

Scott Mendelson
Film Critic and Pundit for Film Threat, Huffington Post, and Mendelson's Memos
Posted: September 17, 2009 07:37 PM
Source: The Huffington Post

Orlando Bloom Finds Trouble on 'Main Street'

2009-05-26T21:02:00+01:00

Orlando Bloom joue le rôle d'un officier de police dans la comédie dramatique "Main Street". ET a pu assister au tournage qui a lieu à Durham, en Carline du Nord, et interviewer Orlando.

Orlando Bloom Finds Trouble on 'Main Street' Posted May 25, 2009 2:24:00 PM

"I like these kinds of movies; I enjoy going to see a slice of life, the way [these] kind of people live," says Orlando. "I like the idea of playing a cop; kind of thinking about how a cop goes about his daily life and what he comes up against."

Orlando perfected his Southern drawl for his character (he even gives his interview with an accent), and he says working with a coach "on the sounds" has "been fun."

Written by the late Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner Horton Foote ('To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Tender Mercies'), 'Main Street' follows a group of people in a small, down-and-out American town whose lives are shaken up by a mysterious stranger's (Colin Firth) arrival on their Main Street, where he chooses to store hazardous waste in a warehouse.

"They've asked me to come over and take a look, and to me it's a bit like I'm dealing with the cat in the tree issue," explains Orlando. "And then I come in and I see all of these canisters laid out; they look pretty ominous."

The film's ensemble cast also includes Amber Tamblyn, Andrew McCarthy, Tom Wopat, Patricia Clarkson and Ellen Burstyn.

Ellen, who plays a tobacco heiress whose real estate dilemma draws in Colin's mysterious Texas businessman, says the production has been very respectful to the screenplay, saying, "We've been very faithful to the script. We haven't changed any of Horton's words."

And Patricia, who plays Ellen's niece in the film, says, "[Horton] writes beautiful characters that are organically driven, that are flawed and yet immensely likable in odd ways." She adds that Ellen is "one of my idols; she's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this project. She doesn't disappoint. She's just stunning."

Watch ET for more with Orlando and the cast of 'Main Street'!

Source : ET Online