EMPIRE: Orlando - what about your fight scenes with Johnny Depp - were they as much fun?
Bloom: There's always a few scraps when playing with swords but nothing too serious. It's hard to learn the routine, so it's really fun but very difficult as well.
Gore Verbinski (Director- POTC): Orlando's being modest. He's come from Lord of the Rings - so he learned the routine really quickly. Johnny used a stunt double the whole time - Orlando is in the whole sequence.
Originally at Empire Online Interview August 7, 2003 now archived at The Orlando Bloom Files
Darkscape: Recently you have been very busy - apart from working on Farscape, you have had a role in the new movie adaptation of Australian-Irish legend Ned "Iron Man" Kelly. How was it to work alongside two of Hollywood's new heartthrobs, Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom?
Jonathan Hardy: As a heart transplant I am always interested in heartthrobs. Both the young actors you mention are real actors as well as being good looking. They are working as a gang with Phillip Barentini and Laurence Kinlan who are wonderful fun. Course Geoff Rush is in it, Rachel Griffeths and Peter Phelps among quite a few.
It is great to work a month the lively. We have some top actors in Australia, many of whom stick mainly to the stage. I am playing the great Orlando, so Orlando keeps being the not the Great Orlando. I think he is really fine and a great and thoughtful colleague.
Jonathan Hardy - The Royal Voice of Rygel
Vanessa Tredrea (and plenty of others) asks: What made you choose Orlando Bloom for the role of Joe Byrne, given he was relatively unknown at the time?
Gregor: Orlando did the best audition. We looked all over the world for that role and Orlando walked in and nailed his audition and got the job. Simple as that.
Gregor Jordan answers questions e-mailed to the Ned Kelly Site on the Ask The Director page
"This scene probably qualifies as just about the most painful deletion from the movie doesn't it? Everybody wanted this scene to be in the film except, there was just an organic kind of flow of momentum at the end that didn't allow room for this. But it's very very funny, and I love the way that the guys play this moment. And it obviously is the whole culmination of the whole rivalry between Legolas and Gimli which we have it in the movie but we don't have the final beat, but here it is."
- Peter Jackson regarding the Final Tally sceneFran Walsh:"Yes, good old Orlando, he managed to get that-"
Philippa Boyens: "Terrible line up off the page."
Fran Walsh: "He did. He crowbarred it up. They've run as if the very whips of their masters were behind them"
Peter Jackson: "All with a broken rib, too."
Fran Walsh: "Yeah, on the move. It was quite a hard piece of ADR."
Philippa Boyens: "He's a GREAT actor, that young boy."
- Regarding the line "They've run as if the very whips of their masters were behind them!"
- From the TTT:EE DVD Director/Writer's Commentary
"He has an amazing future ahead of him," she says of her co-star. "He's a very good-looking boy and a lovely person." Of their onscreen kiss, the 18-year-old boasts, "I'll be the envy of every teen girl." She maintains they kept the smooch "very professional, but we always had a giggle. He was kind enough to make sure he had mints and mouthwash beforehand. I have nothing but good things to say about the kiss."
- Keira Knightly"When the camera is on Orlando," he says, "he is so natural. He's got that look, as if he could have come from another time."
- Jerry Bruckheimer
Orlando watches fame bloom on the high seas - USA Today - July 8, 2003
Eric Bana: "He's a bloody good actor."
Jerry Bruckheimer: "Actors are what they are. The big screen doesn't lie."
"He'll age and go through life's trials and tribulations and that will show on-screen."
-"Prince Orlando" Elle Magazine December 2003
"Orlando is a movie star waiting to happen," says Gregor Jordan, who directed him in Ned Kelly. "He’s going to be huge because he’s a good actor and he has incredible presence. There’s a reason why girls go crazy for him. There’s just something about him that makes people want to sit in the dark and watch him on the movie screen."
"In Full Bloom" by Siobhan Synnot - News.Scotsman.Com 18 April 2004And how was working with Orlando Bloom?
He’s great. He’s very focused. He’s such an intense, focused actor, and he talks very quietly when he looks in your eyes. He’s just very serious and intense. But when they called “Cut,” it’s not like he’s playing around and goofing off, but he’s able to step out of the character immediately and be like, “Okay, so, we’re talking about nutritionists in LA…” He’ll go back to the conversation we were having before the director yelled “Action,” which I love in an actor.I have to say it makes it a little bit easier, if it’s for long days on the set, to be able to break out of that character for a little bit and just relax, rather than staying in such an intense place. Although I do have to say that the scenes we were in together were not super [serious]. I don’t know how he would work if he was dealing with the death of his father in those scenes. In my scenes, it was a little big lighter so I think he was able to step out of the character, which I really love.
-Allison Munn Allison Munn Talks About "Elizabethtown" - About.Com Hollywood Movies“Some actors suit period costumes,” Neeson says, “and others don’t. I always think of Errol Flynn. He looked uncomfortable in a suit—but put him in a ridiculous pair of tights, and he looked to the manor born! John Wayne playing Genghis Khan was quite the other thing. Clint Eastwood in a kilt would look ludicrous. I don’t know what it is. Orlando simply looks the part... “If I were Jack Warner, I’d get a team of writers, get ’em writing period pieces, and sign him,” Neeson says. “Orlando is like a classic ’40s movie star... “When I was that age—Jesus!—it was the Dark Ages of my emotional growth,” Neeson says. “I knew fuck-all about anythin’! Orlando is with it, but not in a hip way. He knows what it takes to make a film, so he treats every department equally: the key grip, the gaffer, everyone. He’s right to. Without them, we’re nothing... “Some actors are utterly lost if you put a sword in their hands,” he says. “Orlando is all physical grace—and there’s Errol Flynn again!”
- Liam Neeson, The Epic Life of Orlando Bloom, GQ(US), November 2005
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