Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom is an English actor. He had his break-through role in the early 2000s as the elf-prince Legolas Greenleaf in The Lord of the Rings films, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Troy, Elizabethtown, and Kingdom of Heaven. Bloom's most recent releases are the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Haven. His mother, Sonia Constance Josephine Copeland, was born in Calcutta, India, the daughter of Betty Constance Josephine Walker and Francis John Copeland, a physician and surgeon. Bloom's maternal grandmother's family has lived in Tasmania, Australia and India, and are of English descent, some of them having originally come from Kent. Bloom had thought that his father was South African-born Jewish lawyer Harry Saul Bloom, but during his younger years and after Harry's death, Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, a family friend. Bloom, who is named after the 17th century composer Orlando Gibbons, has one sister, Samantha Bloom, who was born in 1975.

Bloom managed to struggle through St Edmund's School in Canterbury despite his dyslexia, In 1993, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Bloom began acting professionally with a television role in an episode of Casualty, and subsequently made his film debut in Wilde (1997), opposite Stephen Fry, before entering the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting, sculpture and photography. In 1998, he broke his back in a three storey fall, and it was briefly feared that he would not regain the ability to walk. However, he made a complete recovery and was able to walk out of the hospital on crutches within twelve days. Bloom had steel plates inserted into his backbone to support it, which have since been removed, except for a single screw. He regularly practises yoga and Pilates to strengthen his back.