Orlando Bloom

Born: 13th January 1977
Where: Canterbury, England

Bloom shot to big screen fame after playing the Elven warrior Legolas in Peter Jackson's adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkein classic The Lord of the Rings.

Subsequent high profile appearances include the lead in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp.

After joining the National Youth Theatre at 16, Bloom spent two years there before winning a scholarship to London's British American Drama Academy.

He made his film debut as a rent boy in 1997's Wilde, the biopic of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde before furthering his training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

At the same time he was lucky to escape being paralysed after he fell from a rooftop terrace and broke his back.

Shortly after his 1999 graduation, Bloom was cast in the star-making part Lord of the Rings trilogy and catapulted into the Hollywood A-list.

For his first follow-up part, he was seen in Ridley Scott's war drama Black Hawk Down.

Next he starred opposite Johnny Deep as the romantic, swashbuckling secondary lead Will Turner, in Pirates of the Caribbean, loosely based on Disney's theme park ride.

Subsequent roles have included the lame British comedy The Calcium Kid although he did impress as Joe Byrne in Gregor Jordan's Ned Kelly.

Troy saw him starring opposite Brad Pitt as Achilles in the £150m blockbuster based on Homer's The Iliad.

Bloom continued his run of epic roles in the Ridley Scott actioner Kingdom Of Heaven, in which he takes the lead role of a zero turning into the hero that defends his people during The Crusades.