Orlando Bloom Talks About Near-Death Experience That Made Him Appreciate Life

Orlando Bloom is currently living his best life with Katy Perry. The engaged couple welcomed their first child together back in 2020, and it’s been nothing but good vibes since,.

But life wasn’t always easy for the 45-year-old actor. For World Mental Health Day on October 10, Bloom talked about a near-death experience he had back in 1998, when he was around 20-years-old.

He was climbing up a rooftop terrace with his friends when a drainpipe he was scaling collapsed. He fell several floors from a window and slammed to the ground, breaking his vertebrae in the process.

I was very fortunate to survive the fall because my spinal cord was still intact. And when I was in the hospital, I was told for the first four days that I may never walk again. That was really the beginning of what was a long and painful journey for me into recognizing and understanding some of the patterns that had been in my life that led to me having numerous accidents.

After 12 days inside the hospital, he was able to walk out on crutches, which surprised even his doctors. But the months that followed were some of the darkest of his life.

I would say the months after the fall were quite a dark time. As somebody who’s sort of always been very active in my life, it felt restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain. I would say that for me, the injury created time and space for me to look at my life, recognize what was good and great in my life. Mental health is particularly challenging because it’s unseen. There is always an opportunity for you to transform the pain.

It’s good advice. It’s not easy advice, but it’s good advice. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try, we can’t escape pain in this life. You will feel physical and mental pain at some points, but how you respond is up to you.