Orlando Bloom once revealed to E! that playing an elf created a responsibility of sorts to seriously consider how said fantasy creature would move or act. “I thought about him in terms of his physicality and how he would move,” he explained. “And how he would stand, and how he would be poised.” It also meant he had to anticipate how someone with superhuman strength, reflexes, and senses like eyesight might carry themselves. Bloom continued:

You know, I was thinking about him in terms of an animal and I thought, well, he’s kind of cat-like. You know how a cat will jump up onto a table and just stop, you know? I mean, that’s like Legolas. He’s kind of – all of his muscles are totally in balance and he’s focused, you know, he has that kind of zen sort of samurai style to him.”

Like most of the cast, Bloom always appears a little unrecognizable when he’s fully in character. It still looks like him — if he too had luscious yellow locks and pointy ears. But the way he moves his body, his mannerisms, the way he speaks, and gracefully dispatches enemies, all of it seems to say this is another person entirely. 

It’s also what makes Legolas’ moments in battle so mesmerizing. Like when he’s surfing down some stairs at Helm’s Deep atop a Uruk-hai shield slinging arrows or taking down a Mûmakil all by his lonesome at Pelennor Fields. When Legolas joins the fray you know he’s going to be both deadly precise and exceptionally calm, an image that Bloom nurtures throughout the trilogy. But even the actors who only made it into one film were just as committed to using their fight scenes as an opportunity to really say something about their character.