The Role Orlando Bloom 'Blanked' Out of His Memory
He wasn't exactly thrilled to play it.
Throughout his career, Orlando Bloom has seemingly traveled through every time period and universe. It seems some of those experiences were more enjoyable than others for him, however.
In a May 9 interview with Variety, Bloom confessed that there's one role he'd rather forget: his part as Paris in the 2004 ancient epic Troy. "I think I blanked that movie out of my brain," he said honestly.
"So many people love that movie, but for me playing that character was just like [slits throat]," Bloom said as he dragged his hand across his neck. "Am I allowed to say all of these things? I didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t want to play this character."
At the time, Bloom was an actor on the rise with some pretty big movie credits under his belt. He played Legolas in The Lord of the Rings movies The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The year before Troy came out, he starred in what many consider to be his breakout role as Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Compared to other projects, his part in Troy caught him off-guard, to say the least. He admitted he was excited about the project because of his co-stars and crew, but it wasn't enough to make it fun for him.
"It was completely against everything I felt in my being. At one point, [the script] says, ‘Paris crawls along the floor having been beaten by somebody and holds his brother’s leg.' And I was like, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this,'" he told Variety. "And 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 an agent. I think that’s why I blanked that from my mind."
Despite Bloom's disdain for the project, Troy ended up pulling in nearly half a billion dollars at the box office and helped continue his movie star momentum in the early days of his career. And his action movie cred has only grown with his roles in last year's Gran Turismo and this year's Red Right Hand.