AT&T Entertainment News

Orlando Bloom says he kept referring to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" for his role in the films based on the trilogy.

That's because the three movies, shot simultaneously in New Zealand, were filmed out of sequence over a period of 18 months, Bloom told reporters.

"You could film a scene from the first movie in the morning and a scene from the third movie in the afternoon and you could have shot the scene before that like three weeks earlier or two weeks earlier," the actor said.

"So to keep that all in your head, it was like homework. You'd study the book, then study the scripts and then kind of merge the two."

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is now in theaters. Two sequels, "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King," are set for release in December 2002 and 2003.