Orlando Bloom opens up about his regrets playing Paris in "Troy" despite film's box office success

Orlando Bloom reflects on his role in "Troy" despite its $500M box office success and star-studded cast

Orlando Bloom is proud of his film career, but one role sticks out that he would rather forget. In an interview with Variety for their "Know Their Lines" series, the English actor admitted he "didn't want to play" Paris in Troy.

 

During the game, the 47-year-old struggled to identify his line from the 2004 historical epic, "Do you love me, brother? Will you protect me from any enemy?" After wrongly guessing Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and The Lord of the Rings films, Bloom was surprised to learn it was from Troy. "I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain," he joked.

 

Despite Troy's impressive $500 million global box office earnings and a star-studded cast including Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Diane Kruger, Bloom wasn't thrilled with his role, miming a throat-slitting gesture when talking about his feelings toward playing Paris. 

 

"I didn't want to play this character," he said. "The movie was great—it was Brad, it was Eric, it was Peter O'Toole. And I was like, 'How am I gonna play this character?' It was completely against everything I felt in my being."

 

Bloom also recalled a scene in the script where Paris, after being beaten, crawls on the floor to hold his brother's leg. He opposed doing it initially, but an agent persuaded him otherwise. 

 

"That's the moment that'll make it," the agent claimed, which convinced Bloom to go along with it. "I completely fell for that line of an agent," he added with a laugh, "I think that's why I blanked that line from my mind."

 

Troy, directed by Wolfgang Petersen and based on the mythological Trojan War, featured other notable stars like Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean, and Rose Byrne.

 

Even Brad Pitt, who played Achilles in the film, admitted in 2019 that Troy marked a turning point in his career. "I was 'disappointed' in the film," he shared, acknowledging he only took the role after pulling out of another project. 

 

It wasn't painful, but I realized that the way that movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it."

 

He continued, "So about that time I made a decision that I was only going to invest in quality stories, for lack of a better term. It was a distinct shift that led to the next decade of films."