Orlando Bloom Takes Us Inside ‘The Cut’—and Then Onto the Red Carpet
Orlando Bloom is in the back of an Uber when he hops on our call, with the car alarm gently beeping in the background. The press cycle for his new film, The Cut, is under way, and I manage to catch him for just a couple minutes right in the thick of it, the morning after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The psychological thriller garnered plenty of buzz at TIFF, and as he discusses the project, Bloom has been thrown back into the mind of the tortured retired boxer seeking a championship title.
“When the idea was pitched to me, I was already fascinated by boxing movies, and fascinated by a story in this genre that was different,” Bloom tells Esquire. Usually, these pieces are focused on who comes out victorious in battle. Here, it’s about how the man at the center has to drop a lot of weight—quickly and by any means, legal or not—to even be able to compete. He continues, “It wasn’t focused on the fight but more on the battle to make weight, the fight of making weight—hence the title, The Cut. That felt like a fresh and unique take.”
Bloom mentions to me that he's still recovering from getting into the rough headspace of his character, the Boxer, and the physical transformation he had to go through for the role—one that involved little food, little sleep, and more than a dash of PTSD.
Below, he dives into his metamorphosis for The Cut—and the damn clean, minimalist Celine Homme suit he wore to its premiere.
On his Celine Homme suit
“My stylist, Monty Jackson, was in touch with Celine. I’ve always been a big fan of Hedi [Slimane], and he put something together that was just fantastic. I was very grateful. It was super clean, timeless—it felt sort of like a throwback to another era, which I loved. It was a clean, old-school, movie look.”
On preparing for the red carpet
“I always just try to be centered. As an actor, you make a movie, and you dive into a character. I always go 110 percent. You never know how these kinds of passion projects will land, and this is a very hard subject. There's so much more to the movie and the character than meets the eye; it delves into mental health, physical health, what somebody will do to succeed, and what lengths they’ll go to. Going back to that headspace [for press] is always interesting, but I also am just remembering that we’re making movies. We’re not saving lives.”
On his physical and mental transformation
“The movie is a bit like a train wreck, honestly. It’s watching someone come undone mentally and physically. My headspace from that experience was full of PTSD from making the movie, to be honest. That’s something that I have to navigate now as we go through press, because it was a very raw experience. I had to drop an extreme amount of weight. A lot of the work was done for me almost through the process of doing that, which was really brutal, really harsh on my body and my mind, because you don’t sleep when you’re not eating, and you don’t really feel in your body.”
On fashion’s role in film
“When you get into a performance as an actor, the wardrobe and the costuming is something that really lends itself to the performance. Wardrobe designers are such a key party, and clothing designers have such a massive impact on society. Certainly in film, it’s key to an actor’s performance to have the right style or the right look for a character, so when you see them, you’re immediately struck—it could be the shoes, the jacket, the hoodie. There’s a lot of detail that goes into all of it. That’s something that I try—to be unique in my own style. To be a bit different sometimes.”
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