In 1998, the British actor fell three stories and narrowly escaped death. An incident that nearly paralyzed him for life.
Orlando Bloom plunged back, the time of an Instagram photo, into a painful memory. The British actor shared an image on Friday showing him younger on a bike, wearing a medical corset. A snapshot taken when he was 21 years old, some time following a serious accident which almost cost him his life.
“This is me, in my back brace in 1998, regarding three months following I fell three stories and crushed my spine, narrowly escaping death and paralysis…” commented the star.
“I’m grateful everyday for the parts of my body that allow me to push my limits and live life to the fullest (with greater care now),” Orlando Bloom, 44, added.
“Dark Thoughts”
This is not the first time that the star of Pirates of the Caribbean mentions this serious accident. In 2005, he told to the American magazine GQ that it had happened when he was trying to climb up to a terrace. The gutter he was clinging to had suddenly collapsed, causing him to fall three stories.
“Up until that moment, I didn’t have a healthy appreciation of life and death, and the fact that we’re not invincible,” he said. “And for four days I faced the idea of living in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. My mind wandered to dark thoughts. I realized I was either going to be able to walk once more, be never once more.”
“The doctor told me he wasn’t sure how bad the spinal cord damage was. I remember while he was telling me this I was looking at the ceiling realizing that I had never looked at ceilings before. And I wondered if I was going to spend the rest of my life setting ceilings.”
