Steve Pratt talks to the UK's highest earning star in Hollywood, Orlando Bloom, about gaining his chance to make a Ridley Scott bockbuster as leading man. He still feels he has a lot to do as an actor.

TOWARDS the end of the interview, Orlando Bloom starts fidgeting in his chair and stretching his back. Being stuck in a hotel room for a day of meeting journalists to talk about his new movie is beginning to take its toll. His discomfort is understandable as he broke his back while a drama student and, having recovered, has done a series of large scale action movies.

"I'd had a second operation to remove the pins and plates and then went off to do one of the most physical roles in The Lord Of The Rings," he points out.

The Tolkien trilogy was followed by the swashbuckling Pirates Of The Caribbean, Troy and now Ridley Scott's Crusades epic Kingdom Of Heaven. In a way, doing big action movies has worked to his advantage, he says, because he's received the best treatment and exercise to keep his back in shape.

Although 28-year-old Bloom has had good parts in high profile movies, some doubted his ability to carry a movie as a true Hollywood leading man. As blacksmith turned knight in Kingdom Of Heaven, he proves his worth. Bloom has come of age.

"I read the script when I came back from doing Troy and thought the opportunity to do the complete opposite so soon after playing someone like Paris would be an amazing fit," he say, looking suitably tanned and dashing in preparation for reprising his role in the Pirates Of The Caribbean sequel currently being filmed.

"Ridley threw me out of a helicopter in Black Hawk Down and we talked about this project. Then I auditioned for him. I had six hours to learn three of the biggest scenes in the movie. I went in the next day, he stuck a beard on my face, blood on my forehead and chainmail on my back and I did a screen test.

"Then I waited for a few months like everyone else. When the role came through, to go from playing a boy to a man was a great transitional role for me. Being a leading man was definitely a new and intimidating challenge.

"With Ridley, you knew you were in good hands. I'd had the experience of working on other epics. I'd seen how Viggo Mortensen handled a sword in Lord Of The Rings, how Eric Bana and Brad Pitt did in Troy, and Johnny Depp in Pirates. So I had some idea of how to carry a sword."

His character Balian is a blacksmith, whose wife has committed suicide following the death of their child. "He's a man who goes off on a journey of spiritual discover," explains Bloom. "It becomes a coming of age story when he meets his father, is made a knight, falls in love with a princess and becomes the defender of Jerusalem."

He felt the character demanded a beefier look, putting on 20lbs of weight in terms of muscle and then working on his sword-fighting. "To play the lead in a sword movie in a way was perfect as my first Hollywood lead because I had some experience of it being in other movies and seeing how other people had done it," says the Canterbury-born actor.

"I still have to pinch myself. I'm six or seven years out of drama school, it's very much the beginning of my career. I've had these incredible opportunities, but think I still have a long way to go. I have a lot to do, a lot of things to get wrong, mistakes to make along the way. I don't want to be afraid of that.

"I have a lot to learn. It's about a body of work. You can't judge a book by its cover - or the first couple of chapters."

He's probably the most successful British actor working in US movies today, but Bloom's head appears not to have been turned by all the attention. He's confident but not cocky. He's even kind to animals, for heaven's sake, adopting a Moroccan mutt he found eating camel-dung in the street while filming Kingdom Of Heaven.

Once Scott cast him as Balian, he had no doubts about his ability to pull it off. "I felt like I'd done the proving when I got the role. He employed me and wanted me for the role," he says.

For him, the best way of coping with celebrity is not to read anything written about him. "I don't read the good stuff because if you read the good stuff you have to read the bad stuff," he says, feeling any discussion should be about work

No questions about his three year on-off relationship with American actress Kate Bosworth then? The most he'll say is that having a private life isn't a problem - "only if you let it".

So back to his career which hasn't been totally about blockbusters. He starred in a low budget British film The Calcium Kid in between shooting The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He made Haven with a first-time director between Troy and Kingdom Of Heaven. He's also completed Elizabethtown for director Cameron Crowe.

Currently he's filming two sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean back to back. "You have to re-explore it and try to bring more to it," he says of his approach to reprising the role of Will Turner. "I love the original film and doing it was fantastic fun, working with Johnny Depp."

The cast of the new one is rumoured to include Rolling Stone Keith Richards, on whom Depp has said he modelled his Captain Jack Sparrow. It is a rumour than Bloom doesn't deny.

Career-wise, ex-National Youth Theatre member Bloom is aware that he's been neglecting the stage. "What I need to do is come back here and do some theatre for a bit, just to get in a different style of acting and listening in a different way. After a while, acting in front of a camera can create a different sense of awareness," he says.

In case you think that his agent might recommend continuing with well-paid, high profile movies rather than poorer-paid theatre roles, Bloom adds with a smile: "I'm sure if I want to, I can do whatever I want."

* Kingdom Of Heaven (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: ??/??/2004