‘Some dude Katy Perry met': The baffling rise of Orlando Bloom

Telegraph

a day ago

Among the many eye-popping sights this week in Venice, where billionaire Jeff Bezos tied the knot with Lauren Sanchez amid a storm of local protest (and an actual thunderstorm which sent A-list guests running for cover), perhaps one of the most baffling is the presence of erstwhile actor Orlando Bloom, who has reportedly called off his romance with singer Katy Perry.
Bloom, 48, shot to fame in the early 2000s in two massive franchises, The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, but his career has since flatlined. He has become more famous in recent years for his relationship with Perry – and for weird viral moments like paddleboarding naked – than for his actual performances.
Now it seems he has a new headline-grabbing partnership: a bromance with Amazon founder Bezos. On Thursday, Bloom arrived solo in Venice for the first day of Bezos's lavish £36 million, three-day wedding celebrations.
He first enjoyed an al-fresco lunch at the swanky Gritti Palace hotel with music executive Scooter Braun and NFL star Tom Brady. Perry had previously taken sides in Braun's row with Taylor Swift. In 2019, after Braun bought the rights to Swift's masters, Perry wrote on social media: 'I stand with Taylor. Stay strong my friend.'
Bloom also shared air kisses with fellow wedding guests Kim and Khloe Kardashian. He has a history with Kim too: in 2024 he was spotted seemingly checking out her bottom at a charity dinner in New York. Perry responded to the viral photo of Bloom apparently gawking on a radio show a few days later, jokingly saying 'I approve'. But she might not find his current antics quite so amusing.
A source told TMZ that Bloom was planning to be 'the life of the party' as a single man at the Bezos-Sanchez bash, and we're already seeing signs of that. When the heavens opened at a party at the Madonna dell Orto cloisters and guests – including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio – were forced to flee, Bloom was spotted with a mystery brunette in a striking pale-green mini dress, wrapping his arm around her as they cosied up in a water taxi. (Tabloid reports have identified her as Perry's stylist and friend Jamie Mizrahi.)
Perhaps he's taking inspiration from DiCaprio, who attended the wedding with yet another young model (Vittoria Ceretti, 27), and is forming his own post-split Venetian 'pussy posse' (as DiCaprio and his friends became known in their 1990s pomp).
The wedding trip is presumably a professional obligation for Bloom. His new release is Amazon Prime Video's mediocre action comedy Deep Cover, about three improv wannabes recruited by police to infiltrate the criminal underworld. Bloom plays an oddball, deeply irritating method performer who thinks he deserves meaty roles, but whose only steady work is Pizza Knight commercials. 'You're from the Cotswolds, you're not Al Pacino,' his agent grumbles.
As a spot of meta-commentary on Bloom and his roller-coaster run, it's pretty apt. The actor was born in Canterbury and named after a 16 th -century English composer, Orlando Gibbons. He got his break aged 20 playing a rent boy in 1997 movie Wilde, starring Stephen Fry as the playwright.
He then took a swerve into mega-budget fantasy with the Lord of the Rings films in 2001, starring as the elf Legolas. That catapulted him to Hollywood stardom and instant heartthrob status – although in very specific, slightly kinky terms.
Essentially, fans went giddy at the sight of Bloom as an androgynous folkloric being with a lust-worthy bow and arrow and long, flowing flaxen hair – a cross between a mystical fairy-tale prince and a shampoo ad. He was the ultimate unattainable pretty boy, albeit one with pointy ears. (A friend who worked in teen magazines at this time recalls being inundated with letters specifying that they publish more posters of Legolas – not of Orlando Bloom himself.)
However, that's not exactly a sustainable image for a long career. Nor did Pirates of the Caribbean, his swashbuckling Disney stint beginning in 2003, demonstrate much range. In fact, Bloom, playing the whiny blacksmith Will Turner, was easily the weakest of the cast, acted off the screen by Johnny Depp 's preening pirate and Keira Knightley's feisty heroine.
Bloom's 2006 appearance in TV comedy Extras really summed it up. This 'Bloom' was desperately insecure, working overtime to seduce extra Maggie and making snide, but clearly jealous, comments about Depp such as 'Ooh, look at me, I make art-house movies'. Significantly Maggie, who was once a superfan, later took down her Bloom poster.
Bloom wasn't faring much better in real life, with critics unconvinced by his performances in films such as 2005's Kingdom of Heaven (playing another blacksmith, who joins the Crusade), and box office flops like Elizabethtown (2005), Sympathy for Delicious (2010), The Good Doctor (2011), Unlocked (2017) and The Outpost (2019), as he made abortive attempts to diversify into thrillers, dramas and war movies.
Predictably, he retreated to his fantasy safe place by reprising his Lord of the Rings role in the Hobbit films in 2013-14, and is eager to appear in 2027's next entry in the franchise. Bloom said earlier this month that he'd like to see Legolas 'the same age as he was' in the original trilogy, 'lithe and breezy and warrior-like, so AI would have to come into play'. It's a fairly depressing acceptance that he's never really progressed beyond that early-years hit.
His popularity with Britons in particular took a nosedive in 2021 when he revealed his very Hollywood life in an interview with The Sunday Times. Unfortunate LA-isms included: 'I chant for 20 minutes every day, religiously. I've had a Buddhist practice since I was 16, so that's infiltrated my whole being. I'll read a bit of Buddhism and then I'll type it up and add it to my [Instagram] Stories.'
He also talked about his diet, including mixing green powders with brain octane oil, waxed lyrical about the 'methodical nature of creating' when building Lego cars, and slipped in a plug for his exclusive deal with Amazon, which he'd signed in 2019, and which was probably the origin of his current closeness with Bezos.
In 2014 he drew the wrath of the Beliebers (and pained everyone else) by engaging in excruciating fisticuffs with pop star Justin Bieber. Bloom walked up to Bieber and punched him outside restaurant Cipriani in Ibiza, and the scuffling pair then had to be separated by their respective entourages. One source claimed that Bloom was enraged by a lewd comment Bieber made about Bloom's ex-wife, Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr, who had reportedly been on a date with Bieber in 2012.
It probably doesn't help his appeal that he's also indulged in some strange vanity projects, like 2024 TV documentary series Orlando Bloom: To the Edge. 'I felt about as close to death as I could possibly get,' he boasts in the cringe-inducing trailer, in which he shows off muscles and a man-bun and adopts a mockney tough guy accent, trying to rebrand himself as a death-defying extreme-sports bro – Canterbury's answer to Tom Cruise. Alas, Bloom jumping out of a plane only cemented the image of a career in freefall.
Bloom also made an unfortunate appearance in RJ Cutler's Billie Eilish documentary in 2021. Eilish meets him and Perry at Coachella and completely fails to recognise him. Her brother Finneas later tells her 'he played Will Turner in f---ing Pirates of the Caribbean ', and Eilish, after Googling pictures of Bloom, says 'I thought that was just some dude Katy Perry met'.
Then comes a second even more excruciating meeting, during which Bloom (who is a Buddhist) gives Eilish a lingering hug and says: 'This is the universe hugging you. I'm giving you so much love and light right now.' He probably wasn't aiming to change his public reputation from bland to downright bizarre.
That brings us to the on-off romance with Perry. The pair began dating in 2016 after a meet-cute following the Golden Globe Awards: they were both grabbing burgers at In-N-Out. Bloom went viral during a couple's trip to Sardinia, when they were photographed on a paddleboard – Perry wore a bikini, he was stark naked. Needless to say that has haunted Bloom ever since. 'Are we going to talk about my penis?' he sighed in a 2017 Elle interview.
They split in 2017, with Perry later explaining on the Call Her Daddy podcast that they weren't really 'in it from day one'. She added: 'He was in a way, because he had just done a huge time of celibacy, and he had set intentions' – a quote that raises far more questions than it answers. But the pair got back together the following year, and announced their engagement in 2019. Perry gave birth to their daughter Daisy Dove in 2020.
However, the couple apparently hit a rough patch in the past few months. Bloom's pal Bezos may actually have contributed to their split: the actor was reportedly mortified by her soundly mocked Blue Origin space flight in April alongside Bezos's fiancée Sanchez. An inside source suggested that Bloom warned her about a possible backlash and later told her that the whole thing looked ridiculous.
There were also apparent tensions following Perry's album 143 tanking; reportedly, he had voiced his concerns about that as well. Bloom was allegedly annoyed that Perry then used him to drum up publicity, sharing a risqué story on Call Her Daddy in 2024 – Perry said that if the kitchen was clean, Bloom had 'better be ready to get [his] d--- sucked' – and posting videos on her Instagram of a topless Bloom jogging.
Now Perry is on tour in Australia, so apparently too busy to attend Bezos's wedding (though ticket sales haven't exactly been in high demand). That leaves Bloom in the spotlight as he contemplates his next chapter, which might feature another comeback: he has a Werner Herzog film on the horizon, the gloriously titled Bucking Fasterds. For now, it looks like the sexy elf is back on the market – and raising a glass to Mr Amazon.