Orlando Bloom had to jump through a lot of hoops to get his prized possessions back after they were stolen by the Bling Ring, a group of teens and young thieves who made the news in the early '00s for sneaking into celebrities' houses and taking their expensive belongings.
During a Jan. 17 appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” Bloom said that the ring "took a lot of things" from him and "it was a really weird situation" to be in.
“What they did find was a stash of watches that I’d had. I didn’t have a safe … it didn’t even occur to me at that point in my life," he added.
“They took these watches,” Bloom continued. “I’ve collected watches since I started making movies. I buy one [for] each movie, and they took some very expensive watches. Three months after the robbery, I got a call from a guy who I’d actually bought some of the watches from, saying, ‘I think your watches are surfacing,’ and I was like, ‘What?!’”
The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star said he was told that he could only get his watches back if he paid someone else to get them. However, he was informed that he had to be very secretive about his contact details.
“Long story short, I finally get the number of this guy. I’m calling this guy for maybe three to six months,” he said. “Eventually, I find out where he’s from, and he has a pawn shop down in the valley. I just walked up to his shop one day, and I wired myself."
Bloom said he hired a private detective who told him that it would best if the actor visited the shop with the intention to record the interactions between him and the shop owner.
“I go down there, and I’m like, ‘Hey man, how you doing?’ He goes, ‘Orlando!?’ You know, freaked out,” he said, while recalling that the guy told him to come back the next day.
“[I] turn up the next day, he takes me to meet his daughter … in a shop,” he said. “I think he was trying to show me what was at stake right? I was like, ‘Listen, no police, just, I’d like to get my watches back.’ And he’s like, ‘I got to go around. I got to rough some people up.’ There’s this whole story. And I’m like, ‘Wait what?!’ I said, ‘Well, let’s go! Let’s go. I’ll rough some people up, you ready?’”
However, it didn't come to that. Bloom noted that the man later told him to return to the shop again. However, he told them that he had to go to Thanksgiving lunch with his family so he couldn't.
But the guy wouldn't budge.
He goes, ‘I’m not wasting any more time. Come back, come back,’” Bloom explained. And after eventually returned to the store, the "Lord of the Rings" star noticed that there was "a box" set out in front of him, which contained half of the 10 watches he lost.
"I open it, and I just started to cry," Bloom said.
“I said, ‘Thanks very much, mate,’” he added and noted that he ran away with his stuff.
The raid of Bloom's house was depicted in director Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film "The Bling Ring," which also showed other celebrity houses getting burglarized, like Paris Hilton's and Lindsay Lohan's.
For the movie, Hilton even allowed the crew to film inside her house. She told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 that she admired Coppola's work and wanted the movie to seem as real as possible.
“Sofia came to my birthday party last year. She loved my house and said it couldn’t be re-created in a set," Hilton explained.
“I really admire her, an intelligent independent woman who’s a director," she continued. "Sofia knows everything about these kids now — stuff I didn’t know — and it will be very strange to watch them break in my house five times and sell my Birkin bags and heirloom jewelry on Venice Beach. They stole millions of dollars worth of things from me.”