Orlando Bloom Says ‘Troy’ Role Was ‘Against Everything I Felt in My Being’

Orlando Bloom has a lot of love for his film career, but there’s one role he’d perhaps like to forget.

During an interview with Variety for the outlet’s “Know Their Lines” series, the 47-year-old English actor admitted he “didn’t want to play” the character of Paris in Troy.

One line he couldn’t quite nail during the game was one he utters in the 2004 historical epic: “Do you love me, brother? Will you protect me from any enemy?”

After 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 quipped.

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Despite the fact that “so many people love” Troy — which made close to $500 million at the global box office and costarred Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Diane Kruger, among others — Bloom said, “For me, playing that character was just like,” and mimed slitting his throat.

“I didn’t want to do the movie,” he continued, before clarifying, “I didn’t want to play this character. The movie was great — it was Brad and it was Eric and 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 recalled one specific moment in the script where Paris “crawls along the floor, having been beaten by somebody, and just holds his brother’s leg.” It was a scene he was against doing, but an agent of his at the time told him, “That’s the moment that’ll make it.”

“And I completely fell for that line of an agent,” he added, laughing. “I think that’s why I blanked that line from my mind.”

Set during the mythological Trojan War in the 13th century BC, Troy was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and also starred Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean, Brian Cox, Rose Byrne and Garrett Hedlund.

Pitt, 60, previously opened up about how Troy marked a turning point in his career, telling The New York Times Magazine in 2019 that he was “disappointed” in the film.

“I had to do Troy because — I guess I can say all this now — I pulled out of another movie and then had to do something for the studio. So I was put in Troy,” the Oscar winner admitted. “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 added in part, “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.”