Book week competition

What do they have in common?

Leonardo Da Vinci Keira Knightley Orlando Bloom Sally Gardner

Leonardo da Vinci (famous painter), Keira Knightley (famous actress), Orlando Bloom (famous actor) and Sally Gardner (famous writer) are all famous artists of many talents. They were all diagnosed with Dyslexia, and they all started their careers at an early age.

Unlike Leonardo who was Italian and lived in the Renaissance period, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom and Sally Gardner are all English and still alive. Knightley and Bloom are both famous actors. Although Gardner is famous as a children’s writer and illustrator, she is also an actress, known for Piccadilly Cowboy (2007) and Life Classes (2010). Like Gardner, Leonardo was also a brilliant writer in his childhood.

Leonardo, like Bloom, was conscious of the world around him. He loved animals and was vegetarian his whole life. Bloom not only is vegetarian but is almost entirely vegan as nearly all his meals are entirely plant-based. Another thing in common between the two is that of being ambidextrous which means being equally talented with both right and left hands.

The four artists have won various titles. Leonardo represented the term ‘Renaissance man’. Today he remains best known for his art including two paintings, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Knightley has received an Empire Award, Bloom became a UNICEF ambassador in 2009 and received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award and Gardner won both the Costa Children’s Book award and the Carnegie medal for Maggot Moon, a young adult novel.

The four artists had gone through difficult times throughout their lives. Leonardo considered himself as a failure because he had difficulties with sticking to tasks and complete them, in fact dozens of his paintings had been found incomplete. He spent his childhood with his mother in poverty. Knightley suffered from panic attacks, had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Bloom had suffered several injuries namely broke his left arm, cracked his skull three times, broke his nose and right and left leg, right wrist, his back and broke some ribs. He had been stolen nearly half a million dollars’ worth of belongings. Gardner had been badly bullied in school, even being nicknamed ‘Silly Sally’.