The Orlando Bloom role inspired by Oasis and Ian Brown: “Attitude, arrogance, and confidence”
There’s little doubt the summer of 2025 will be remembered as the summer of Oasis.
It has been the year that the Gallagher brothers dictated a United Kingdom uniform of bucket hats and retro football tops, the radio has once more been alive to the sound of Britpop anthems, and anyone who wasn’t there the first time around is making sure they were there the second.
30 years after Britain first went insane over the Mancunian band that merged the Beatles with the Sex Pistols and an attitude, you can once more look out of your window and see young lads swaggering around like monkeys, ‘simian strolls’ as Elbow’s Guy Garvey calls them. And why not? There’s enough upsetting stuff going on in the world without worrying about a few people pretending to be Liam after a few pints.
It was always the way too, much as Noel was the brains and the songwriting talent in the operation, it was Liam who everyone wanted to be like, to dress like and to sound like. He absolutely did not care what anyone thought, he swaggered around London as though he owned the place, and he said things like “Mad fer it,” which didn’t really mean anything, but everybody said all the same.
And it seems superstar movie actors aren’t immune to the Gallagher-aping effect, according to a recently unearthed story about Katy Perry’s ex, the Lord of the Rings man himself Orlando Bloom.
Working on a little-remembered 2010 movie called Sympathy for Delicious with Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney, Bloom revealed he turned to not just Liam for the inspiration for his cocky rocker character, but also ‘King Monkey’ himself, Ian Brown. He said: “I was thinking of Ian Brown, lead singer for The Stone Roses and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis.”
“A lot of the great British bands come from the North of England. Those guys, particularly, the Gallagher brothers and Ian Brown, have got this real attitude, arrogance and confidence that they are the best band in the world and everyone needs to know that and I really thought that lent itself to (fictional movie band) The Stain.”
In fact it was Brown that Liam Gallagher got a lot of his stage persona from. The younger Gallagher brother was a huge fan of the Stone Roses before forming his own band which Noel later joined. He spoke of them as the reason he wanted to get into performing after seeing them live in Manchester circa-1989. He also teamed up with the band’s guitarist John Squire for a full album in 2023, although the less said about that the better all told.
Bloom’s film was a slightly odd one, directed by Ruffalo it told the story of a newly-paralysed DJ who discovers he has special healing powers but decides to join a rock band because he’s so angry at the world. Or rather at the motorbike accident that paralysed him.
It didn’t get great reviews to say the least; one probably summed it up best when it said: “You can’t make this stuff up. Or rather you can, but you shouldn’t.”
Earlier this year, Bloom starred in a much better reviewed film with Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed and Jurassic World star Bryce Dallas Howard called Deep Cover. Made for Amazon Prime it’s all about an improv teacher who convinces her students to do dangerous undercover work for the police.
He’s soon to be seen alongside SNL’s Pete Davison in Wizards! – a comedy about two friends who run a beach bar but find some stolen treasure.
