'''Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom'''
(born January 13, 1977) is an English actor. He came to fame in the early 2000s, after playing Legolas in ''
The Lord of the Rings'' films, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including ''
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl'', ''
Troy'', ''Elizabethtown,'' and ''
Kingdom of Heaven''. Bloom's most recent release is the sequel ''
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'' and Haven.
Biography
Early life
Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Copeland, was born in Calcutta, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon;
Bloom's maternal grandmother's family has lived in Tasmania, Australia and India, and are of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent.
Bloom had thought that his father was South African-born Jewish lawyer Harry Saul Bloom, but during his teenage years and after Harry's death, Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, a family friend. Bloom, who is named after the 17th century composer Orlando Gibbons,
has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.
Bloom attended St Edmund's School in Canterbury, but struggled due to his dyslexia.
In 1993, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy.
Bloom began acting professionally with a television role in an episode of ''Casualty'', and subsequently made his film debut in ''
Wilde'' (1997), opposite Stephen Fry, before entering the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting, sculpture and photography. In 1998, he broke his back in a three story fall, and it was briefly feared that he would not regain the ability to walk. However, he made a complete recovery and was able to walk out of the hospital on crutches within twelve days.
