Orlando Bloom

Bloom graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Two days later, he got the call to play Legolas in The Lord of the Rings. He was 22, with essentially no film credits, about to spend several years playing an immortal elf in one of the most demanding shoots in cinema history. The role stuck because he had the physical grace the character needed and the discipline to deliver it. When Pirates of the Caribbean came two years later, he was Will Turner, the straight man opposite Johnny Depp's chaos. Two massive franchises back to back before 30.

After Pirates 3 wrapped in 2007, the blockbuster engine stalled. He spent years doing smaller films and stage work, including a Broadway Romeo and Juliet in 2013, before Amazon's Carnival Row gave him a TV vehicle from 2019 to 2023. The drift is significant: he was one of the most sought-after leading men of the early 2000s, and now gets covered more for his personal life than his roles. He and Katy Perry split in 2025 after six years engaged. The franchise guy without a current franchise.

In 1998, while still at Guildhall, he fell three stories from a rooftop terrace when a drainpipe gave way and crushed his spine. Doctors told him he might never walk again. He ignored that. He walked out of hospital 12 days later with titanium pins in his back, and a year later he was doing his own stunts as Legolas. There's a version of his career that never happens, and it's the one where the drainpipe holds.