President Pavel and Orlando Bloom met in Prague to discuss Ukraine

Czech President Petr Pavel met with actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Orlando Bloom last week to discuss the impact of the war in Ukraine on children.

“Orlando, please keep doing the important work you are doing in highlighting the terrible war atrocities committed against Ukrainian children by the Russian occupiers,” Pavel said on Instagram and Facebook. He said the meeting took place on Wednesday, March 22.

The Instagram post has over 117,000 likes and 580 comments. Bloom’s girlfriend, singer Katy Perry, said “That’s my hero irl [in real life].” That comment alone got over 4,200 likes.

Bloom has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2009 in recognition of his commitment to the rights of children around the world. He also has connections to Czechia. He starred in two seasons of “Carnival Row,” a TV series filmed in Prague’s Barrandov Studios. Filming took place between 2017 and 2021, with a break due to the Covid pandemic.

On Sunday, Bloom traveled to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to discuss the restoration of the country, school infrastructure, and the forced migration of Ukrainian children to Russia.

They agreed on cooperation in building bomb shelters for children and technical support for distance learning in regions where it is not possible to go to school physically due to acute danger, according to ČTK.

The actor traveled to Moldova to meet refugees near that country’s border with Ukraine shortly after the outbreak of war last year. He wrote about his experience for the U.S.-based celebrity magazine People.

“I can't stop thinking about all the families I met and everything they left behind. Not just their homes, but their schools, friends, family members and almost everything they own. I think about my own children and what it might be like for them to suffer the pain and grief of losing their homes and everything they've ever known in a senseless instant,” he wrote.

In addition to “Carnival Row,” Bloom is known for his roles in two of Hollywood’s biggest film franchises, The Lord of the Rings and The Pirates of the Caribbean.