Why did The Lord of the Rings mock Orlando Bloom during filming?

Legolas is a very bad character. The Prince of Mirkwood owns the battlefield. He’s walking on snow. He restrains his comrades when they become angry and displays remarkable wisdom for his unknown but venerable age. Despite Elvish’s youth, the character is played “The Lord of the Rings” film by Peter Jackson adapted For mortal actor Orlando Bloom – who was in his early twenties at the time.

Speaking at a career retrospective at the 2025 Fan Expo Chicago (via Entertainment WeeklyOrlando revealed that despite his immortal warrior persona in those films, he was vulnerable to drama behind the scenes. As he recalls:

“I was the butt of most of the jokes, because I never got dirty. Legolas never got blood on his hands, he never got dirty. Viggo (Mortensen) would love to talk about my nice hair, my clean face and hands, my nails and things like that. It was funny.”

Orlando also made other interesting comments about his warrior character. In particular, he discussed his experience traveling around New Zealand with the other actors in the film during their time off from filming. Indeed, despite the teasing, he had only good things to say about that period of his life, which he summed up as follows:

“I was 20 or 21 – we were all young. It was a lot of fun. We were a family of friends.”

Orlando Bloom was a spotlight-stealing character in JRR Tolkien’s star-studded adaptation of Peter Jackson’s film. He even returned as the main link between Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit” as well. Even a quarter of a century after he first played Legolas, he could easily return to a project Like the upcoming “The Hunt for Gollum.”which is currently under development. Unfortunately, as of this writing, there is no confirmation yet of his participation in this film. However, there is no doubt that Bloom wants to participate.

Back in 2024, when the project was just starting to move forward, Bloom revealed that while he didn’t know much about the plans for the film, he had spoken to director (and Gollum’s returning actor) Andy Serkis about it. Bloom is now twice the age he was when he first played Legolas, and shared that when he asked how to bring back actors like him at this stage, Serkis replied: “Well, artificial intelligence!” Of course, this angered the very protective members of Tolkien’s fanbase. (They don’t want AI to invade their Middle-earth, after all.)

But the real news here is not artificial intelligence. (To borrow a line from Gandalf, “My heart tells me so Gollum The AI ​​has a role to play, for good or for ill, before this is over.”) No, Bloom appears to be trying to return to Middle-earth. He even ended his comments with the note:

It was a very magical time in my life, one of those things where there was no downside.

AI or not, hopefully Bloom will find his way back to his obvious character in the Fellowship of the Ring prequel (in one form or another).