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Finding room to Bloom

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Outside his comfort zone: Orlando Bloom is starring in a gritty David Storey play set in a Yorkshire mining town

The Hollywood heart-throb is turning his back on blockbuster movies like Pirates Of The Caribbean to appear on the West End stage

Bloom's role in David Storey's In Celebration is a world away from Legolas

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Being holed up in a broom cupboard-sized office with Hollywood A-lister Orlando Bloom would undoubtedly tick many girls' fantasy boxes. Normally sane colleagues had been reduced to giggling puddles of mush by the mere idea of meeting him; shamefully, I'd spent about three hours beforehand trying to decide what to wear.

The man himself, though, looks far from happy. In the slightly scruffy surroundings of the National Youth Theatre rehearsal rooms, he shifts restlessly in his chair, looking anywhere but at me with those big brown, heart-throb eyes, and his conversation is peppered with pauses, erms, sentences that trail into nothing and endless y'knows.

In fact, when our time is up, he gasps as if he's been underwater, and says 'We're done, aren't we?' with barely suppressed glee and punches the air - which he does then have the good manners to dissemble into a big stretch.

Truth is, Bloom isn't giving many interviews for his latest project; maybe because he's already a long way outside his comfort zone. After a remarkable cinematic career that has seen him star in five of the 15 top-grossing movies of all time before the age of 30, this quietly earnest Kent lad is going back to basics and making his professional stage debut.

It's been nearly ten years since Bloom trod the boards - and even then his amateur stage experience in his final year at Guildhall was somewhat limited, as he was recovering from the small matter of breaking his back.

'Doing all these big movies, there's not the same skill set needed,' he agrees, when I suggest maybe his acting capabilities haven't exactly been tested by the Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogies.

'Certainly my sword routine was being tested,' he grins.

'Theatre acting is just a different muscle, and I'm sort of shocking it into life. Right now, I'm finding the rehearsal space where we're working a very intimidating place, much more so than any $300million movie set.'

His latest role is indeed a long way away from Legolas and Will Turner. For David Storey's wrenching 1969 play In Celebration, directed by Anna Mackmin, he plays Steven, the youngest of three brothers from a Yorkshire mining family who have all been traumatised in different ways by being educated out of their social class.

When they reunite for their parents' ruby wedding anniversary, the brothers' festering resentments and misery explode. It's a perfect encapsulation of Philip Larkin's famous condemnation of parental good intentions.

'I'm shocked to say I didn't really know the play,' Bloom admits. 'At drama school, you do Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, all the greats, and I mention those three because I think that David Storey as a playwright has a lot of those qualities: there's a lot of subtext and so many layers.'

So much of what is unspoken is important in In Celebration (in fact, Steven, seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, doesn't speak that much) that it can make for bewildering reading on the page.

'That's exactly it. When I first read it, I was like, er, OK,' Bloom admits, laughing, adding that at first he wanted the role of firebrand older brother Andrew - 'I wish I could say I was old enough or even capable enough,' he says modestly.

His own role has good pedigree, though: Bloom's Troy co-star Brian Cox played Steven when it debuted at the Royal Court in 1969.

But Bloom isn't looking to boost his ego by stealing the show: he's eager to stress the ensemble nature of the piece. 'I love this sort of telescope on this family in this one room and the dynamics of that family. Every family has a story and, as I've been working at it, I've sort of realised that the brothers breathe as one, really.'

There's no getting away from the fact, though, that his presence is going to shift tickets - and probably stretch security at the Duke of York's Theatre.

Daniel 'Harry Potter' Radcliffe had to climb out of a window to escape the screaming hordes when he was in Equus, I point out - and he's not been routinely voted most fanciable man on the planet.

'Yeah, I know,' says Bloom with a bit of a shudder, adding slightly defensively, 'I'm not doing it for any reason other than to re-immerse myself in acting.'

Rather endearingly, he then ties himself in knots trying to suggest he doesn't know how a large percentage of the female population views him.

'Somehow I think the perception is I'm some sort of, I dunno, pin-up movie star, whatever.' He laughs, embarrassed. 'For the most part, though, I've just been very supported by fans. And anyway, Londoners are a bit cool-for-school, you know what I mean?'

Really, Orlando? I think you'd still better check you can fit through that back window.

In Celebration previews from Thu, opens Jul 16 to Sep 15, Duke of York's Theatre, St Martin's Lane WC2, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, Tue and Sat mats (from Jul 14) 2.30pm, £15 to £45. Tel: 0870 060 6623.

Tube: Leicester Square

 

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