Orlando Bloom, just shy of his 30th birthday, has already appeared in four of the highest-grossing movies of all time, as Legolas in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and as Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean. With Johnny Depp and Keira Knightly, he's currently starring in the second in a planned trilogy of Pirates, which will undoubtedly add to his ever-growing worldwide popularity.

I met Bloom at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills last fall, while he was taking a break from filming the second and third Pirate films in the Bahamas. "One of those hurricanes nearly washed away our set," he said, not really worried about the film getting back on track. "But with the money Disney has and their need to have the movies in theaters sooner than later, I am sure we will be back at work very soon."

They were. The second in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, is now in theaters, and Bloom is currently wrapping up work on the third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, due in theaters next summer.

Bloom, once one of People magazine's "sexiest men," grew up in Kent, England, and speaks with a British accent. He's not only a household name with preteens, who have his posters plastered on their walls, but his name slips off the tongues of their older siblings, parents and grandparents.

The fact that he is currently dating Superman Returns star Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane) doesn't seem to bother his fan-base. "Girls giggle and point, no matter where I go, as if I am some high school star soccer player or something," he laughed. "But I like my privacy, and try not to make too much of a spectacle of myself. I save that for the big screen."

He's outfitted in a pair of blue jeans, black shoes, and a long-sleeved, pullover brown silk shirt, rolled up just enough for me to notice the tattoo on his right arm. "It's the rings from Lord of the Rings ." He's pretty much in Pirates mode, with a full nest of brown, curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a tuft of brown hair on his chin, on an otherwise smooth face.

"In the second Pirates movie, my character goes from being a straight-laced bore to more of a pirate, thankfully. It was sort of like discovering my inner pirate for the first time!" he said.

In the movie, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) discovers he owes a blood debt to the legendary Davey Jones (Bill Nighy), Captain of the ghostly Flying Dutchman. Time is running out, and Jack must find a way out of debt or be doomed to eternal hell in the afterlife. To add insult to injury, Sparrow's problems manage to interfere with the wedding plans of Bloom's Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), who are forced to join Jack on yet another misadventure.

"I have fulfilled my childhood fantasies during my acting career, playing larger-than-life characters. I have played an elf, a knight, a soldier, a prince. But I never dreamed of being a pirate, even as a lad. Making Pirates was a great opportunity to work with some great people."

Threeways

Bloom, currently finishing the third Pirates film, doesn't feel quite so exhausted shooting the second and third back-to-back. "I never thought, after doing the three Lord of the Rings back-to-back, that I would ever end up in another trilogy. But Pirates is an ensemble movie. I don't have as much screentime in them as I did in Rings. But it was a challenge still, because you've got the arc of two movies to cover. You can shoot a scene from the second movie in the morning and the third movie in the afternoon, and trying to remember where your character is emotionally at that point in the scenes can be a bit challenging. You have to play the truth of the moment, and the writers have created great stories and characters."

Later this summer, Bloom will appear in a little movie, Haven, which he finished filming two years ago on the Cayman Islands. "It's this crazy, kooky little movie directed by a 24-year-old kid, Frank E. Flowers. It's really a hard movie to describe. It's independent, action, mystery, but not really. The movie was a lot of fun to make, and I'm very proud of it and can't wait until it gets a theatrical release. But it is not easy getting financing for movies that have not already been financed by a huge studio."

Haven tells the story of two shady businessmen (Bill Paxton and Stephen Dillane) who flee to the Cayman Islands to avoid federal prosecution. But their escape ignites a chain reaction that leads a British native (Bloom) to commit a crime that changes the nation.

Bloom also appears on a four-disc director's cut of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, just released on DVD. "I can't wait to see that," he said. "I loved working with Ridley Scott, and hope I can again in the future." There is also Elizabethtown, now on DVD, which proves that Bloom can speak with an American accent. In the Cameron Crowe film, he co-stars with SpiderMan's flame Kirsten Dunst.

Will there be a fourth Pirates, perhaps of the Atlantic?

"Ha, ha," he laughed. "Very funny, but with Disney, you never know. Let's see how the second and third do. If audiences love them, there's no telling how many more there could be." Maybe even with Bloom as the star, if Depp gets killed off. Hint, hint.