Orlando Bloom: ‘Mental Health is One of the Huge Challenges of Our Times’

In the film Retaliation, Orlando Bloom plays a demolition worker and an adult victim of childhood sexual abuse by a priest who confronts the horrors of his past. Retaliation is a passion play and a revenge thriller.

Your character in the film lives with trauma and deals with it the best way he can. So how do you manage your mental health in these days of the pandemic?

I would say that mental health is one of the huge challenges of our times, especially with the advent of social media and different platforms that feel like they are set up to engage us in ways that don’t necessarily behoove us. I always think about breaking a sweat every day, moving my body every day in any way possible. I try to limit the amount of time that I spend on any of my devices. I try to engage in a spiritual practice, which I’ve had since I was a kid, and that’s my Buddhist practice. There are few things that I find in order to re-center myself and ground myself and getting out in nature is great if you can.

What do you hope that this movie will accomplish?

I hope that it will highlight the compassion and empathy for people with mental illness. Because often we don’t understand why a person is behaving in a certain way and we write them off as mentally unsound and therefore dangerous or whatever else it may be. Or if they are obese and doing things to sort of disguise themselves. I worked with this organisation called One in Six just before shooting the movie, the organisation helps men who have suffered abuse. I felt that responsibility and I immediately thought even if this movie is seen by a handful of people who have suffered sexual abuse, they can feel a connection.

What is your relationship to institutionalised religion?

Regarding this film, when you look around the world, the amount of people who have been terribly corrupted for their religious beliefs, it requires a great amount of humanity, humility and understanding, to have compassion for each and every person’s faith and belief. And as long as it is rooted in the right course of action, I’m for it. I’ve been exposed to many different spiritual practices and as I said I landed up with the Buddhist practice because it really worked for me. I did a lot of religious readings around the Bible and so on when I was a child, and I think they all kind of meet in one place or the other. But what is important in the end is how you are educated.

You are going to be a dad for the second time, so, what advice do you have for first time dads?

I think for first-time dads—sometimes not for everybody—you kind of go,‘Well, it’s a baby, what do I do? I can’t do anything. It just wants to feed and sleep.’And then you almost talk yourself out of the conversation or the process in some ways and actually I was lucky I got to do the nighttime feeding and stuff. I would say it is being as present as possible which is sometimes challenging for the man because you’re not required to breast feed or feed, but whatever you can do to be involved it’s magical

After this lockdown and all restrictions are lifted, what are you most looking forward to?

I’m English as you know, and I haven’t seen my family in quite sometime now. Longer than normally because obviously the borders are closed and we are not even seeing friends, so I’m looking forward to seeing friends and family and all being able to get together somewhere, so that we can all enjoy each other’s company and not being afraid to shake someone’s hand or embrace someone. There will be a time when that will come but I think it’s going to be challenging for awhile and we will have to hold the line as it is. But I’ll be excited to break bread with family and friends.