ORLANDO BLOOM plays cool cat Legolas the elf in The Lord Of The Rings.

'I felt as if he had a warrior element,' the 24-year-old actor told me. 'I had to learn how to handle a bow and arrow, a two-sided sword, and do bareback horse-riding.

'Elves have this superhuman strength, yet they're so graceful. Tolkien created them to be angelic spirits, but I also saw Legolas as something out of the Seven Samurai,' he said.

Born and raised in Canterbury, in Kent, Orlando has an inner strength that comes through on screen. He probably inherited that from his late father, Harry Bloom, a legendary figure in antiapartheid circles in South Africa.

Bloom wrote a famous tome called Episode In The Transvaal, was jailed for his beliefs, and worked alongside Nelson Mandela. 'Harry was a great man who died when I was four, and it was as if he'd done his job and then left the world,' his son said.

Orlando and his sister Samantha (an actress) were raised by their mother and a guardian.

The toughness that runs in his family came in handy when he fell from a window a couple of years ago, crushing his back and breaking three ribs. 'It was amazing that I didn't die. I was young and dumb. Amazingly, I walked out on crutches in 12 days.' Orlando was the action man on the set. 'I went bungee jumping, and surfing became the pastime for the Hobbits and me. I busted a few bones, but I'm alive and well.'

His next movie is Ridley Scott's Blackhawk Down.