So you’ve finally gotten down of your horse for a film.
Orlando Bloom: [Laughs] “Yeah. I got off of my horse and put down my sword. Obviously I wanted to do a contemporary piece, and I think that it’s a kind of right of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that, and thankfully had someone like Cameron Crowe, who really understands the American culture and Americana–the real kind of sense of family and community that you find in places like Kentucky, where he’s from. So I had a good time going there and I had a great dialect coach helping me. I’d like to say that it was easy, but it was pretty hard work. It’s something else to think about when you’re doing it, when you’re trying to make the performance real and make the dialect your own. I tried to stay in the accent as much as possible, even after work and stuff, so that it was comfortable in my mouth and that I’d get used to the sounds.”
How do you describe Elizabethtown? It’s more than just a romantic comedy.
Bloom: “It’s got this whole thing of success and failure, life and death. The movie really ends with a beginning and begins with an ending, as Cameron has said. We can all relate to that thing of going out to make enough money to buy a house, to buy the new car, to buy the new watch. You are bombarded with the idea that these things are going to bring you happiness. The truth is that you can’t take those things with you when you go, and life isn’t about just what you accumulate. And for [my character] Drew, that’s his lesson. He goes on this journey to realize that, and when he goes down to Kentucky he meets his family, he meets this girl on the plane, and it’s a sort of wake up call for life. It’s an awakening and he learns to appreciate himself in order to appreciate the family that he has, to come to terms with the loss of his father and to fall in love with a girl who’s offering him this great life. It’s all sort of woven in this rich tapestry of America and the South.”
How did you like your time filming in Kentucky?
Bloom: “I never had been to the heartland of America and I never understood what Southern hospitality meant until I was there and people were baking cakes and cookies and bringing ice cream to the set. It was like this is America. It’s a whole different world than the cool, hip cities of New York and L.A. that as a Brit I know. I kind of fell in love with it a little bit. When you stand outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, or you stand in front of the Survivor Tree in Oklahoma City, or you’re just standing on a bridge across a river in Arkansas–which is amazingly beautiful–you just can’t help, but be awakened to this America that is sort of in the shadows in terms of the world’s opinion of it for some reason. Cameron has this amazing way of saying, ‘Look, this is my view of America.'”
Drew is a golden boy who hits a major wall. Having had such success at a young age, do you see his story as a potential cautionary tale for yourself?
Bloom: “Oh, definitely. But I always feel like I’m the edge of a fiasco. The truth is that I’ve found myself doing all these huge action adventure movies, which are cool and I really love doing them. This is the first movie where I’ve been given more intelligent acting and drama and human interaction, and there is a subtlety and finesse to it that’s very different from what I’m used to doing, which is just reacting. I’m learning as I’m going. I’m hoping to be able to do more of that stuff, because I really enjoyed it and it was fun not to have to get on a horse and risk my neck and it was fun not to have to learn a sword routine. I still like doing that stuff, too, by the way: I’m doing [the sequels to] Pirates of Caribbean now.”
This film is built around the idea of second chances in life. Do you feel you’ve ever been given a second chance, like Drew?
Bloom: “For me it was falling out of a window. I was 21 in London, and I was at drama school in my second year. I was at a friend’s house and I was trying to help them out with a roof terrace. I was trying to get on the roof terrace from the window. I tried to get on a drain pipe and shimmy across to the roof terrace from the window. And I fell back. Everything was going great and everything has gone great since then, but it was a really scary time in my life when I was looking at not walking again, not being able to do what I love, and potentially just not having any of the opportunities that I’ve had. My back is a constant reminder of how lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing. It does claim me every now and again. I have to constantly stretch and workout and keep on top of it and eat well, because if I don’t it really affects my body. It’s a good reminder for me. It’s a constant reminder. I take it as a blessing that I’m getting to do what I’m doing today.”
How is Cameron Crowe different from other directors you’ve worked with?
Bloom: “Cameron uses music as a tool, as an acting too. It’s very usual. I’ve never come across it. I mean, Johnny [Depp] listens to music in his ear, and I listen to music before I go to work–I have an iPod on the set or whatever it might be, but Cameron will play music to set the tone for the scene. He’ll blast music in the middle of a take, and it kind of makes the text have a real sense of irreverence and freedom to it. And time is such a precious commodity on any movie set, and he affords you the luxury of time. He’ll blast a tune and we’ll be listening to music while the film is rolling, and you feel like, ‘Wow. If he can afford to just let that happen then I can afford to just let it rip.’ And so you try things and you experiment. He always gets what he wants because ultimately it’s his vision and he’s very specific as a writer/director, but you do get to riff around it. It’s like you’re playing your own piece of music.”
Did he turn you on to any music you hadn’t previously been familiar with?
Bloom: “Tom Petty has those fantastic anthems that we all know, but I hadn’t really been that familiar with them. I got into those. Far and Wide was a band that we went to see together. It was like Cameron and [his wife] Nancy [Wilson] and me and my partner and friends. We all went together to see this band play and it was cool. I hadn’t heard them before. They are really very, very good. He turned me on to that and some of the rarer Dylan stuff like that live LP. Obviously he’s got a huge collection of eclectic music. I mean, I hadn’t heard Elton John’s ‘My Father Is Gone.’ That’s a fantastic anthem for our movie and a wonderful track. It’s so powerful, man, and I hadn’t even heard that.”
Did you and Kirsten Dunst click right away? Was the chemistry immediate?
Bloom: ‘We were very good friends very quickly. We were both really excited to be making a Cameron Crowe movie. Cameron provides a really great family friendly environment in which to work and we were like, ‘Cool. We’re making a movie. Let’s get on with it and have some fun.’ Cameron‘s really good at orchestrating chemistry between characters. I mean, when you play a piece of music you can create any sort of vibe or tone or chemistry, whatever you’re looking for. Me and Kirsten just got on really well and the chemistry, the connection, was there and easy to do.”
At this point are you comfortable with your celebrity, and the attention and interest in your personal life that comes with it?
Bloom: “I don’t think that you ever get comfortable with that, and if I do ever get comfortable with that I’ll be worried, because it’s not something that makes you feel comfortable. It’s just odd. Do I accept that it’s part of the business? Yeah. Do I accept that I get to live a life where I get to fulfill my dreams in terms of characters that I get to play, and I get to travel the world and have a great life? Yes. I realize that you can’t have the sweet without the sour, but do I enjoy being photographed? No. Do I like having my life being spoken about or rumors being spread? No. But what do you do? It’s not something that you can do anything about. You either let it eat you away or just go, ‘Look. It’s part of life.’ I know who I am and the people around me know who I am and they know what I’m about.”
Is there any one thing that’s been put out there you’d like to set the record straight on?
Bloom: “If I cared enough I would. If I cared there would be, but to be honest there isn’t.”
