Orlando Bloom feared his penis would be bitten off by a Rottweiler whilst filming a dog attack scene in his latest movie ‘Unlocked’.
The 40-year-old actor broke the internet when he was photographed paddle boarding naked whilst holidaying with his ex-girlfriend Katy Perry in Italy last year, but he very nearly lost his impressive manhood on the set of the action thriller when he was filming scenes with a large canine without a stuntman in Prague.
Speaking to Nick Grimshaw on his BBC Radio One Breakfast Show, he explained: "Wherever possible I try and do all my own stunts… (the dog scene) was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done because it was like a 130 or 150lb Rottweiler, charging me down. The dog handler doesn’t really speak English and he was just like, ‘keep your hand inside’ – with just cardboard basically protecting my arm and the dog’s locking on to it and shaking like a lunatic and I’m trying to make it look like I’m gonna beat the hell out of it."
Sharing his groin concerns, he continued: "I’m a dog lover, I’m not scared but I was terrified actually. I was like, ‘what if he misses my arms and gets something else, there’s a lot of other big parts of me!’ It was very scary, we did it a couple of times and I was like, ‘enough!’
Bloom stars in the Michael Apted-directed movie opposite his friend Noomi Rapace, whom he describes as "lovely".
But he almost turned down the opportunity to play the role of the MI5 operator because he wasn’t happy about how the character appeared on paper.
He explained: "Michael Apted, is great – obviously his work speaks for itself – but I sat down with him and I was going to say, ‘you know what I’m not going to do this movie, cause I didn’t really (like the character). I love Noomi and I’d love to support her in this kind of female Bond/strong woman role, I’m up for that but what was on the page initially was this guy who was an uptight, MI5 operative, her opposite her CIA kind of operative and it was just so like cookie cutter, not interesting."
So in a bid to persuade Bloom to sign to the film that is based on a script that puts London at risk of a biological attack, Apted gave him the opportunity to reinvent the character. He explained how he made the MI5 operator "more loose and free".
Bloom said: "I kind of saw him as a higher gun in the military service but being fired and sort of a bit thuggish and probably spent too many times in crack dens. A bit of a wrong’un but … he’s had proper training – so when he’s got an objective to fill he’s going to fill it at any cost, you know, because I end up beating the hell out of her by the end of the movie and then being eaten by a dog!"
But Bloom admitted he gets a kick out of being scared.
He said: "Actually I love that more than anything to be honest, a little bit of adrenaline where you don’t know what’s going to happen and it could go either way, it’s so scary."
Over the years, Bloom, who starred in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’, has picked up plenty of skills through doing his own stunts including riding 50 different horses for his role as elf warrior Legolas in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s books.