Orlando Bloom

Orlando Bloom Says He Won't Get Naked Onstage

By Pete Norman

07/12/2007 at 08:35 AM EDT

Orlando Bloom won't bare his rear end in London's West End, much to the disappointment of fans buying tickets to his stage debut.

Bloom, 30, who recently announced he wanted to take a break from movies, hits the boards for the first time Thursday, starring in the David Storey play In Celebration.

Bloom fan sites claimed he would be appearing naked onstage like Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, who went au naturel in his own stage debut, the play Equus.

"I heard what they're saying," Bloom tells an interviewer for Britain's The Guardian. "But you've read the play. Where would I possibly get my clothes off in it? It's bizarre."

In the play, about three brothers who escape the mining life represented by their father, Bloom is at one point invited to take off his coat, but that's the only disrobing in the production set in the gritty north of England. (He does, however, sport a new mustache for the role.)