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All this attention "makes me nervous," Bloom says, which may explain why he often seems guarded, even overrehearsed, in interview, as if he took a class while studying at London's storied Guildhall called "The Answers a Young Actor Gives Upon Achieving a Measure of Fame." He's tried hard to balance his need for privacy with a desire to please fans — at Pirates' European premiere, last month in London, he kept the audience inside the cinema waiting for half an hour while he signed autographs and kissed swooning girls. "Celebrity and stardom are never things I wanted," he says. "To acknowledge that's what's happening is odd. To admit it to yourself, that seems wrong."

But he's hardly unprepared; he had the acting bug since childhood. At Guildhall — alma mater of Ewan McGregor and Joseph Fiennes — Bloom's focus was stage. He appeared in a raft of productions, including classics like Antigone, Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya, and says, "I had every intention of going onto the stage."

Lord of the Rings took him onto a much bigger stage than he'd imagined, and Bloom still says that the 15-month shoot in New Zealand was the greatest thrill of his life. But The Calcium Kid "was creatively the most rewarding experience I've had — loads of dialogue, exercising muscles that had been lying dormant." It is his first chance to carry a film. He plays a milkman and amateur boxer who finds himself up against the world champion. Bloom is glad that fans like Pirates, but says, "I can only hope the people who write me thousands of letters will go see this. I feel proud of what it meant for me." Each film teaches unique lessons, "and I'm learning a lot about my craft," he says. "To come out of school and to work with the kinds of actors I've worked with has given me a fantastic introduction." His latest challenge is to play Troy's Paris, who steals another man's wife — the legendary beauty Helen (Diane Kruger) — and sparks a war. It's a nice change to play the bad boy, says Bloom. "Will in Pirates and Legolas, they're obvious hero types. Paris is an antihero, and this is the story of stories."

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) Look at his projects — ancient Troy, the colonial days of Pirates, time immemorial in Rings — and one question does come up: Need a reality check? "My realities do blur a little," he says. "This isn't real life. I managed to get home for my best friend's wedding, and I had this real sense of achievement." Earlier this summer, he made a move toward normality by buying his first home, a place in London, partly because "my mum was losing her mind" with all his stuff cluttering up her house. He's barely spent any time at "home" so far, but plans a break after Troy wraps next month.

At the end of The Lord of the Rings' marathon shoot, Bloom was given a ring with the inscription to wherever it may lead. Fans may look at what he's done and what he has planned — a possible Pirates sequel, the lead role in the biopic of Dan Eldon, a photojournalist who was killed on assignment in Somalia — and marvel at how rapidly his star has risen. Bloom does, too, sometimes. "I don't want to be jaded," he says. But he also knows this acting stuff "is not life or death. You can't take yourself too seriously. The truth is, we're making films. It's playing. It's dressing up." Then, break over, he slips into the finest in Bronze Age breastplate craftsmanship, and steps back onto the road toward Troy and wherever else his blessed path may take him.