BLOOM BUILDING AN ECO HOME

Thursday May 24,2007

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ORLANDO BLOOM may be worth an estimated £17million but the eco-friendly actor claims he can’t afford to buy a decent home in London.

Instead, the Pirates Of The Caribbean star is building his own environmentally sound pad at a secret location in the British countryside.

“I was trying to buy somewhere in London but couldn’t afford it,” says 30-year-old Orlando. “It is not the actors making the money, it is the boys in the City.”

Kent-born Orlando remains tight-lipped about where he is constructing his new eco home – which will use recycled materials and come complete with solar panels – but freely admits the project has been hard work.

“Building a house has been so stressful, it has taken double the time and double the budget – but I did make changes,” says the Lord Of The Rings actor.

“I wanted to make a green house, a place that felt safe and comfortable and out of the way.”

Orlando has been involved with an environmental company called Global Green for nearly five years. He recently went to Antarctica to photograph the effects of global warming, spending three weeks studying the weather patterns in a Norwegian icebreaker.

“I slept in a room the size of a bus shelter and shared a toilet and bathroom with 27 other dudes,” he recalls. “It was the most surreal real experience I have had in a long time.

“There were no privileges – the privilege was being in that position at that time. I went scuba diving and climbed a mountain. The water was freezing but I had a swim just for the hell of it.”