By British actor Orlando Bloom broke through with the double blockbuster punch of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films in the early 2000s.
Sandwiched in there were a couple of other notable films including Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down” and “Kingdom of Heaven,” Gregor Jordan’s “Ned Kelly,” and Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown”.
The biggest one-off though outside those two mega-franchises was “Troy,” Wolfgang Petersen’s big-budget sword-and-sandals epic adapting Homer’s “The Iliad” and starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson Diane Kruger, Peter O’Toole, Sean Bean, Rose Byrne and Eric Bana.
Whereas Bloom’s other roles had him very proactive, in Troy he was cast as the less-than-heroic, selfish and spineless Paris whose lust for Helen kicked off the war in the film. Speaking with Variety, Bloom says it’s a role he tries to forget as he hated playing that character:
“Oh my god, ‘Troy.’ Wow. I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain, by the way. 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. 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 an agent. I think that’s why I blanked that from my mind.”
Bloom stayed in sword and sandal mode after, jumping over to Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven” which was a more heroic role. That film famously was dismissed at the time until the director’s cut led to it being reassessed as one of Scott’s best films.
The post Orlando Bloom Didn’t Want To Do “Troy” appeared first on Dark Horizons.
