Orlando Bloom Was Told He'd Never Walk Again After Falling 3 Floors When He Was 20

Orlando Bloom is vividly recalling his terrifying experience that nearly left him paralyzed after falling three floors.

During an appearance on Trevor Noah's What Now? podcast, the Lord of the Rings star opened up in greater detail about that fateful day in 1998, when a well-intended gesture resulted in a medical emergency that actually required paramedics to convince a hospital to admit him as a patient.

Bloom, now 47, recalled visiting a friend's apartment in west London's Notting Hill neighborhood. They had just moved in but were having trouble accessing the apartment's terrace because the door wouldn't open. And that's when a then-20-year-old Bloom decided to jump into action, an "ADD impulsiveness," as he called it.

The then-relatively unknown actor figured the door just needed to be kicked in from the outside.

"I looked out the window ... and I'm like, 'I could just jump that. That's no problem,' and instead I saw this piece of metal running down the wall, which was not a drain pipe you could hold on to," Bloom recalled. "It was a piece of metal, like coming out of the wall. I was like, 'Well, if I just pinch it like this I'll grab a hold of it like this.'"

He jumped and tried to grab on to the piece of metal, but he somehow lost his grip and fell, landing on a first-floor apartment's balcony. He said he landed between railings with spikes and an old washing machine.

"I landed plum between the middle of it," he said.

Bloom was out of it "for a couple of minutes" before belting out to his friends above that he could "wiggle" his toes "but nothing else."

After paramedics kicked the door in to the unoccupied first-floor apartment, they tended to Bloom, whose problems were only getting started. He said the nearest hospital was not in a position to take in patients, prompting paramedics to call a hospital in north London.

"They were like, 'We have a 20-year-old kid who may never walk again unless you take him in,'" Bloom recalled.

Bloom says it took the ambulance a staggering five hours to get him to the hospital because the ambulance had to drive "at walking pace" due to the severity of his injuries. The ambulance even came with a police escort. The severity of his injuries included an almost-severed spinal cord. He also said that he felt a razor blade-like sensation running up his legs with every touch, "almost like electricity."

Bloom said doctors told him they'd have to open his spine and pin a plate above his crushed vertebrae and then more pins below two fractured vertebrae. He was then fitted into a titanium back brace, but there was no guarantee he'd get to walk again.

In 2005, Bloom opened up to GQ about the ordeal.

"Until then, I didn't have a healthy appreciation for life and death -- that we're not invincible," Bloom told the magazine. "And for four days, I faced the idea of living in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I went to some dark places in my mind. I realized, I'm either going to walk again or I'm not."

In August 2021, Bloom again shared his story on Instagram with a post showing him wearing a back brace while riding a bicycle. Fast forward to now, Bloom is hosting a new Peacock series, Orlando Bloom: To the Edge, a thrill-seeking docuseries in which he teams up with extreme sports pros and embarks on adventures in their respective sport.

Bloom recently sat down with ET and shared how fiancée Katy Perry continues to support him and pushes him to be "the best version" of himself.

"It's so encouraging… we're both, I think, you know, cheerleaders for each other," Bloom said of Perry, 39. "She definitely pushes me to be the best version of myself and we both hold each other accountable as best we can."

Orlando Bloom: To the Edge is streaming now on Peacock.

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