Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy of films, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including Troy, Elizabethtown and Kingdom of Heaven. Bloom most recently appeared in the sequels Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Bloom made his stage debut in In Celebration at the Duke of York’s Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, which ended its run on 15 September 2007.
Category: LotR Cast News
SARA STEWART writes: You have to wonder where Viggo Mortensen finds the time to act. In between gigs like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and David Cronenberg’s movies (most recently “Eastern Promises”), the 50-year-old star is also a photographer, poet, musician, painter, publisher, activist and avid traveler. He’s fluent in Spanish, Danish, French and possibly Elvish. When we caught up with him, though, he kindly stuck to English, and to the projects at hand: first, “Good,” opening Wednesday, about a German professor who, through his passivity, unwittingly ends up a high-ranking member of the Nazi party. Early next year comes “The Road,” the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a father and son traveling in post-apocalyptic America. Q&A with Viggo Mortensen
Heidi from Bloomberg Television sends this in: Friday on the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® program “Night Talk,” host Mike Schneider talks to Actor Viggo Mortensen about his latest film “Good.”
He talks about the success of The Lord of the Rings. “I think that anybody that was involved in that project, or any fan even, that says ‘I knew it was going to be huge box office success,’ I don’t think they’re being honest. I think its revisionist thinking. Because when we were shooting that movie…it just wasn’t a known thing, and it wasn’t really noticed that we were down there shooting this all that time. It wasn’t in the papers here. It was only when they showed 20 minutes of it at the Cannes film festival in 2001 that the journalist started talking.” Continue reading “TV Watch: Viggo Mortensen on ‘Night Talk’”
Bernard Hill (born 17 December 1944) is a British actor of film, stage and television. Widely recognised in his home country through a career of more than thirty years, he has been seen worldwide in two roles: as the captain of the Titanic (1997), and as King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. These are among the most popular and award-winning films of all time.
Hill was born in Manchester, England. He attended Xaverian College although at the time it was known as “Xaverian School”, and attended Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama at the same time as Richard Griffiths. He came to prominence in the role of the unemployed Yosser Hughes, a working-class man ultimately driven to the edge by an uncaring system, in Alan Bleasdale’s BBC Play for Today The Black Stuff (1979) and its more famous series sequel (also by Bleasdale), Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). His character’s much-repeated phrase “giz a job” became popular with protesters against Margaret Thatcher’s government, because of the high unemployment of the time.
Previously, he had taken smaller parts in a number of British television dramas, notably appearing as the no-nonsense Roman soldier Gratus in I, Claudius (1976). He also played the Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York in the BBC’s 1982 productions of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays. Also on TV, he played the part of Tom Higdon in The Burston Rebellion (1985) and Mike in Edward Bond’s Olly’s Prison (1993). Hill was also a character in the movie The Scorpion King (2002), in which he was a scientist and inventor. He also appeared in the film The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), playing Dr. Daniel Hawthorne.
Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress. The daughter of actors Barry and Lindsay Otto and the sister of Gracie Otto, she began acting at age nineteen, and has performed in a variety of low-budget and major studio films.
Her first major film appearance was in the 1986 film Emma’s War, in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia’s bush country during World War II. After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, she gained Hollywood’s attention after appearing in supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998) and What Lies Beneath (2000). Her breakthrough role was in 2002, when her character Éowyn appeared in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Her private life, including her relationships with actors Richard Roxburgh and Peter O’Brien, has been much discussed in the media. In 2008, she starred in the now-cancelled American television series Cashmere Mafia and will appear in the film In Her Skin.