HE'S a British star who is used to rubbing shoulders with Hollywood's finest.
But Orlando Bloom has become pretty adept at some of life's less glamorous "roles" — such as cleaning up baby sick.
Touchdown ... Miranda Kerr carries baby Flynn through the airport
MATRIXPICTURES.CO.UK Yet the 34-year-old is clearly loving being husband to supermodel Miranda Kerr and dad to their nine-month-old son Flynn.
In an exclusive interview, the star reveals he is now putting his son and 28-year-old Aussie Miranda — who he wed in July last year — first.
The Kent actor returns to the big screen this year as a rocker in drama Sympathy For Delicious and in a 3D version of The Three Musketeers.
And he will also be reprising his Lord Of The Rings role, elf archer Legolas, during the filming of two-part prequel The Hobbit.
Skin character ... Orlando Bloom takes a break on set
GoffPhotos.com But he is clear his priorities have changed.
"There's no time for anything other than what you feel really is important," he says.
"Everything comes into focus. There was all that other nonsense you used to spend time worrying about, then, hang on a second, I've got this three-hour block here before I'm going to get baby puke on me. What am I going to do with that?"
Taking time out to get married and become a parent has given Orlando a fresh zest for his screen work.
"I just took a little bit of time to get my head straight, have a baby and a family and now I'm enthused about working a whole different way." Becoming a father has also given the star a fresh perspective on his own unusual upbringing.
Orlando had believed his father was political activist Harry Bloom, who died of a stroke when Orlando was just four. But when he was 13, his mother Sonia dropped a bombshell. She told Orlando his biological father was a man called Colin Stone, who he had thought was a family friend.
The private star does not generally like to talk about this complicated teenage drama.
But he admits the most profound experience of his childhood had been "probably losing my father, or my mother's husband, who I thought was my father. "That was pretty interesting, and then finding out when I was 13 who my father really was." It was confusing, but he coped, adding: "I think I reacted pretty well for a 13-year-old. "I was lucky because my dad is a huge part of my life today and he's super excited about being a grandad, and I'm excited about it too, so he's amazing.
"But it was a pretty tricky thing to figure out when you are a kid."
Launch pad ... Orlando Bloom in the Legolas role that catapulted him to stardom
REXThanks to his major roles in two of the biggest trilogies of all time — The Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean — he is one of Britain's great box office success stories.
Orlando says he is thrilled to be going back to Middle-earth — in the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, the first part of which is due out next year. For it was the 2001 Lord Of The Rings film, The Fellowship Of The Ring, that gave him his big break.
He worked with Peter Jackson on that and the rest of the trilogy — and it's clear he holds the 49-year-old New Zealand-born director in high esteem.
Nautical pin-up ... Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean
"The debt of gratitude I owe him for everything, is huge... it's beyond huge.
"If he said, 'jump', I'd say, 'how high?'. I don't know how much there is for me to get in there, but it's going to be great." The Pirates Of The Caribbean star also had the chance to swashbuckle again — alongside Christoph Waltz and Matthew Macfadyen in The Three Musketeers.
In this 3D version, which hit UK cinemas three days ago, Orlando plays the French queen's secret lover, The Duke of Buckingham.
Orlando says: "It's a story that can be made for every generation and this is the one for this generation. It's a 3D crazy, action-adventure — it's taking it to a whole other level."
One for all ... Orlando Bloom stars in the Three Musketeers
"The Musketeers are great roles, but when it came around, I was like, The Duke of Buckingham is going to be a complete turn for me and I was so excited about that.
"You'll see with the movie that he's out there." After that Orlando can be seen in another unfamiliar role — playing what he describes as a Liam Gallagher-style rock star in Sympathy For Delicious. The film is directed by American actor Mark Ruffalo and is about a young man, nicknamed Delicious D, who is left paralysed by a bike accident.
Despite that, Delicious D joins a rock band, which is led by Orlando's character, The Stain.
The actor says: "I kind of based The Stain on some of those great Northern rock bands like Oasis and the Gallagher brothers, and Ian Brown from The Stone Roses, off all of those guys who were like, 'We are the best band in the world'. Nobody is. And so I was thinking about that for The Stain, because I have some crazy lines like, 'I am the lord, thy what have comes.' Stuff like that, you know, which is kind of an interesting line to try to make work."
The Stain is a bad boy and the prospect of it was somewhat daunting for Orlando. "That was what I was most excited about, and slightly terrified about, with this role," he says. "It is a part of trying to shift the perception of myself that came from doing a lot of big movies.
"This was an opportunity to have a real crack at that, with a character that's just outlandish, kind of an egomaniac and a bit of a petulant child.
"It was the chance for me to let rip. The hair really helped and the leather trousers and tattoos.
"Bad guys really do have all that fun — and it was great."
Making the movie also made Orlando reflect on a near life-changing accident. The actor who plays Delicious D, Christopher Thornton, is paralysed from the waist down, after fracturing two vertebrae in a rock-climbing fall when he was 25. Orlando was nearly left in a wheelchair himself when he broke his back in a three-storey fall at the age of 21.
He had climbed out of a window in London to try to reach a nearby roof terrace, but as he stepped on to a drainpipe it gave way. Orlando was told he might not be able to walk again, but an operation was totally successful. He says: "I was really lucky. I was less than millimetres away from being in the same position that Chris is in.
"It was really Chris and Mark that made me think of it and my injury doesn't really play in this movie, but it is something I can keep touching wood about."
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