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Orlando Bloom is opening up about a difficult time in his life, detailing a near-death experience he suffered as a teenager. The 45-year-old Hollywood star shared his story in honor of World Mental Health Day.
“When I was 19 I fell three floors from a window and broke my back,” Bloom explained, “I was very fortunate to survive the fall because my spinal cord was still just intact. I was told for the first four days that I may never walk again.”
The actor is an international goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and his story was shared on their social media. “That was really the beginning of what was a long and painful journey.”
He continued, revealing that he was able to recognize and understand “some of the patterns that had been in my life that had led me to having numerous accidents.
“And the culmination was breaking my back, which was a near-death experience,” he said. “I would say the months after the fall were quite a dark time.”
Bloom went on to explain that he is now grateful every day for being able to move his limbs, pushing his limits and living his life on the edge “safer now.”
“As somebody who’d sort of always been very active in my life, it felt very restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain,” he concluded.