Orlando Bloom has fond memories of making movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Lord of the Rings,” but Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 historical epic “Troy” is a different story. During an interview for Variety’s “Know Their Lines” video series, Bloom blanked on one of the lines said by his “Troy” character Paris (he thought it must be from “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Lord of the Rings”) and admitted that he has mostly blocked the movie out of his mind.
“Oh my god, ‘Troy.’ Wow. I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain by the way,” Bloom said. “So many people love that movie, but for me playing that character was just like [slits throat]. Am I allowed to say all of these things? I didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t want to play this character.”
“The movie was great. It was Brad [Pitt]. It was Eric [Bana] and Peter O’Toole,” Bloom added. “But how am I going to play this character? It was completely against everything I felt in my being. At one point it says Paris crawls along the floor having been beaten by somebody and holds his brother’s leg. I was like, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ One of my agents at the time said, ‘But that’s the moment that will make it!’ And I completely fell for that line of a agent. I think that’s why I blanked that from my mind.”
“Troy” opened in summer 2004 and grossed nearly $500 million at the worldwide box office. Loosely based on Homer’s “Iliad,” the film featured a sprawling cast that included Bloom, Pitt, Bana, O’Toole, Diane Kruger, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson and more. Bloom’s character, Paris, is the Prince of Troy whose affair with Queen Helen (Kruger) ignites the Trojan War.
Kruger made headlines last fall for saying the making of “Troy” was “exhilarating, but it was a circus. The sets were huge, paparazzi were flying around in a helicopter, waiting for Brad Pitt. It was crazy! When the movie was coming out, the press in Germany was very, very tough on me. They found my father, whom I haven’t seen since I was 13. They made up stories. It was really harsh.”
The actor added that by time the film premiered in Cannes, she was feeling “very insecure and very sad.”
“I was thinking: ‘Is that what it’s going to be like, forever? I can’t deal with it.’ Brad could see I was upset,” she added. “He came to my room and said: ‘I have heard some things and I want you to know that you are one of us now. Don’t let them get to you.’ He was so incredibly kind. It really changed a lot of things for me.”
“Troy” arrived at a pivotal time in Bloom’s career, as he was coming off the mega-successful “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and had also released the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” blockbuster. Watch his full “Know Their Lines” video with Variety above.
Additional reporting by Tiana DeNicola.
