Orlando Bloom gives his bit-part the chop By BAZ BAMIGBOYE

Orlando Bloom is doing full on martial arts training for a Hong Kong kung-fu movie.

It means Bloom has had to drop out of the small role he was going to take in An Education, which has just started production, with Carey Mulligan playing a teenager in Sixties London who comes under the spell of a charismatic - and totally unsuitable - older man played by Peter Sarsgaard, who introduces the girl to a high-living lifestyle.

Bloom was to have played a friend of Sarsgaard's character. Instead, the fastrising Dominic Cooper will play Bloom's role.

Mr Cooper will be seen this year in the screen version of the hit musical Mamma Mia! (still in the West End), and opposite Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes and Hayley Atwell in The Duchess.

Meanwhile, Bloom is limbering up and getting fit to be in Johnny To's movie The Red Circle, which will film in Hong Kong.

By the way, An Education is based on a memoir Lynn Barber wrote for Granta - it was adapted for the movies by Nick Hornby.