ELF KICK: Orlando Bloom
Not much. No star is rising faster than his. Of course the boy from Canterbury, England, has worked hard to propel it. He's had a packed shooting schedule during the past two years, as his role as the elf Legolas in The Lord of the Rings has turned him into a teen heartthrob and a sure-fire box-office draw. And in the next nine months, audiences will get to see the latest results of his relentless workload. First up is the well-reviewed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which opens across Europe this month. Then comes the Aussie outlaw-gang flick Ned Kelly at the end of September, followed by The Calcium Kid, a spoofy comedy with Bloom in his first starring role, and one last elfin turn in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Finally, next May, comes Troy. You don't need to be a lovestruck teenage girl to notice that Bloom is one of the hottest talents in the business.
In Pirates he plays Will Turner, who, with his olive skin and wispy goatee, must be the best-looking swordsmith in the West Indies. Fueled by love, Turner sets out with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to rescue damsel-in-corseted-distress Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) from dastardly pirate Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). When you watch Bloom parrying onscreen, you see shades of pirate-movie icon Errol Flynn — a natural. But Bloom was actually the last lead to be cast. "We really needed somebody who could hold his own as the love interest-Errol Flynn character, so the audience wouldn't think Keira was going to end up with Johnny Depp," says director Gore Verbinski. Rush, who had also worked on Ned Kelly, suggested Bloom, and Verbinski set up a dinner with him and Knightley. During the meal, Verbinski recalls, "I just kept looking at them across the table and thought, 'This could work.'"
It does — on several levels. Bloom and Knightley make a sweet — and so gorgeous — couple. And Pirates gave Bloom the chance to work with his hero, playing the earnest straight man to Depp's camp, wisecracking swashbuckler: "I can guarantee any actor my age would say Johnny Depp is the guy." Bloom also recognized this as more than just his biggest part so far in a major movie. "I talked to my manager," he says, "about the fact that Pirates would open a bigger door to the American market than other films I'd worked on."
He was right. Pirates' take at the U.S. box office is nearing $200 million. But how big a door does he think he needs? He's already got Hollywood at his service. Troy director Petersen explains Bloom with a single word: "Beautiful." Verbinski thinks the actor's appeal is that he's "beautiful and accessible. As cool as Orlando can be, there is also something there you can relate to," he says. "He has the ability to create characters we love to watch, yet he doesn't isolate us."
And how they love to watch. "Everywhere on the Net, it was, 'Yeah, we love Frodo, but who's that elf?'" says Jasparina Mahyat, 36, a Singaporean wife and mother who spends seven hours a day maintaining Orlando Bloom Multimedia (orlandomultimedia.net). Younger fans paper their bedroom walls with posters. They kiss their Orli pillowcases ($9.99 on eBay) goodnight. And they flock to online message boards like "Orlando Bloom Is 100% Buff" to read and post news. (And gossip — is he, like, really going out with Kate Bosworth, that blond girl from Blue Crush? He won't say.) According to the search engine Lycos, Bloom has owned the title of most popular male actor online since January 2002, getting more searches than any other — even his Troy costar Brad Pitt. (Bloom still trails Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez in the overall stakes.)