Full In Bloom
A DAUGHTER, AN ENGAGEMENT AND A CAREER-CHANGING PERFORMANCE IN RETALIATION, ORLANDO BLOOM IS ON VERY FINE FORM, FINDS LARUSHKA IVAN-ZADEH
RLANDO Bloom is looking the tiniest bit worse for wear (ie, still 99 per cent more attractive than anyone else on Earth). Daisy Dove Bloom, his six-month-old daughter by fiancée Katy Perry, is keeping him up most nights.
‘Sleep is a little sporadic,’ he smiles, stretching out his tanned biceps as he yawns. ‘But I’m very grateful for this beautiful new addition to my life. It turns out a global pandemic is not a bad time to have a baby.’
Nor a bad place, if you happen to be on pat leave in Hawaii, where the Bloom-Perrys are currently vacationing. Neither Katy nor Daisy photobomb today’s Zoom call but, actually, that’s just as well. I’ve got enough visual
overload to cope with, having just watched Orlando’s bare-knuckle new indie drama, Retaliation. In it, Bloom plays Malky, a demolition worker who is suffering violent PTSD after being sexually molested by a priest. One unforgettable scene sees him strip naked in front of a full-length mirror, exposed to his own pain with acting so intense it’s no surprise Retaliation has been heralded as Bloom’s finest ever performance. Frustratingly, it’s taken over three years to reach our screens. ‘I honestly had given up hope about whether it would see the light of day,’ says Bloom.
That pained him, not just because the Pirates Of The Caribbean star ‘gave my heart and soul’ to a role he considers ‘will open a new chapter in my career’ but because he felt a weight of responsibility in terms of the subject matter.
To research the role,
Bloom spoke to 1in6, an organisation which claims that, shockingly, at least one in six men have been sexually abused or assaulted.
‘They said, “please make this movie” because of the way it articulates the mental health complications of what happens when you experience abuse,’ he says.
Bloom clarifies that he isn’t one of the one in six himself.
‘I mean, everyone has their boarding school moments, but I was never sexually abused,’ he says. ‘I feel very fortunate.’
Born in Canterbury, Bloom attended a private boarding school, called St Edmund’s. Yet despite that privilege and his flowery name, he doesn’t come across as posh – his accent more at home on the estates he used to hang out on. These days, with more muscle on him, he looks like he could handle himself in any scrap.
Now 44, has the Lord Of The Rings star put his ‘elf’ years behind him?
‘I can’t speak to how people see me but yes, in some ways,’ he says. Though obviously proud to have starred in two of the biggest blockbuster trilogies ever, he’s keen to move on. ‘The passage of time needs to happen. Things happen in life that teach you and you live and grow and become a man. Retaliation is part of my commitment to take the road less travelled.’
Talking of ‘commitment’, what are the latest wedding plans?
‘Well, they were all put on pause…’ Bloom begins, before a disembodied voice cuts him off.
‘Let’s keep the personal stuff out,’ raps a female American official from nowhere. ‘We need to wrap this up.’ Bloom is unperturbed. A remarkably down-to-earth chap clearly at home in his skin, as he will be in his $14.2million new mansion in Montecito, California, he is endearingly keen to share about embracing fatherhood the second time round – he already has a ten-year-old son, Flynn, by his first wife, actress Miranda Kerr.
‘I feel really good,’ he says. ‘I feel strong in myself. I feel more present. I feel more connected. This pandemic has given everyone the time to reflect on what is important and to have a child come into that moment has been pretty epic.’
A new trilogy has begun.