Hollywood's Bloom to act in film on Sarajevo siege

Actor Orlando Bloom attends a meeting with city officials in Sarajevo August 12, 2008.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom said on Tuesday he was stepping aside from the big productions that made him a star to work in a film about life in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during the 1992-95 siege.

The film is based on the book Fools Rush In by American writer and filmmaker Bill Carter who lived in Sarajevo at the height of the siege. It will be directed by Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington and produced by Elliot Lewitt.

"A film is a very specific and personal account of Bill Carter's experience in Sarajevo during the war and we would very much like to make the film here," the star of the Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings told reporters in Sarajevo.

"This is a departure from the very big Hollywood productions," Bloom said after the film's crew met with the Sarajevo Mayor, who promised financial and other support for the film.

"I'm not in fact playing Bill in this movie but I read the script and the very human story at the very core of this film spoke to me very clearly," he added.

In the book, Carter described his life as an aid worker in besieged Sarajevo in 1993-94 and difficulties and joys he shared with local people trying to preserve the sanity during the 43-month-long shelling of the city by the Bosnian Serb forces.

Bloom declined to provide more details about the film but said he hoped the shooting would start at the end of the year.

"Hopefully, we can get this movie to be made at the end of this year. To come here and shoot would be just wonderful," he said.

Carter made documentary Miss Sarajevo, produced by U2's singer Bono and late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, after he managed to make the first satellite link between Sarajevo and U2's Zooropa tour in 1993.