Orlando Bloom believes the late Queen Elizabeth "saved" his life.

The 48-year-old actor was gripped with terror when his parachute failed to open and he had to pull the emergency toggle while free-falling at 120mph for his TV show 'Orlando Bloom: To The Edge', but he believes fate intervened thanks to the British monarch, as the incident occurred just hours after she passed away in September 2022.

Orlando is quoted by the Daily Mirror newspaper as saying: “I cannot believe this just happened to me on my seventh jump.

“I pulled it twice, I looked up, the toggle, it was twisted and locked and I couldn’t get it. I was like, ‘What do I do? Do I undo and try and untie it?’

“That one was for the Queen and she totally saved me.”

After successfully returning to the ground, Orlando called fiancee Katy Perry and told her: “You know it’s not my time.”

The 'Lord of the Rings' star - who has Flynn, 13, with ex-wife Miranda Kerr and three-year-old Daisy with Katy - finds such stunts exhilarating because they bring him close to death.

He said: “Growing up, I was addicted to the adrenaline rush and I never thought about the consequences.

“Dying gets in your head when life and death feel so next door to each other. And that feeling, and that’s what keeps me pushing forward. Why am I doing this? Why do I love it? And I think it’s because I never feel so alive as being so close to death.”

Orlando recently praised Katy for her support when he was undertaking dangerous stunts for the show.

He told E! News: "We both respect each other's paths and journeys and creative endeavors. And I think she knew that this was something that was on my path and something I'd chosen.

"She understood that it was going to be something that would be, pardon the pun, but the wind beneath my wings in some ways and that it was necessary for me.

"She's wonderful in that way, in that regard. she's very supportive."