{{Infobox actor
| name = Claire Bloom image = Replace this image female.svg imagesize = caption = birthname = Patricia Claire
| Blume birthdate = birthplace = Finchley, North London, England deathdate =
| deathplace = othername = yearsactive = spouse = Rod Steiger
| (1959–1969)
Hillard Elkins (1969–1972)
Philip Roth
| (1990–1995) homepage = academyawards = emmyawards = tonyawards =
}} 'Claire Bloom' (born 'Patricia Claire Blume'; 15 February 1931) is an English
film and stage actress.

Biography Early life Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the
daughter of Elizabeth (née Grew) and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales.[http://www.filmreference.com/film/73/Claire-
Bloom.html Claire Bloom Biography (1931-)] Her
paternal grandparents, originally named Blumenthal, as well as her maternal
grandparents, originally named Griewski, were Jewish immigrants from Eastern
Europe. Bloom attended secondary school at the
independent Badminton School in Bristol.

Career After training at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Central
School of Speech and Drama, Bloom made her debut on BBC radio programmes. She
made her stage debut in 1946, when she was 15, with the Oxford Repertory
Theatre. Her London stage debut was in 1947 in the Christopher Fry play [[The
Lady's Not For Burning]]; the following year, she received great acclaim for her
portrayal of Ophelia in [[Hamlet]], the first of many works by William
Shakespeare in which Bloom would appear.

Bloom has appeared in a number of plays and theatrical works in both London and
New York. Those works include [[Look Back in Anger]], [[Rashomon
(play)|Rashomon]], and Bloom's favorite role, that of Blanche in the Tennessee
Williams play [[A Streetcar Named Desire (play)|A Streetcar Named Desire]].
Bloom has also performed in a one woman show that included monologues from
several of her stage performances.

Bloom's first film role was in 1948, for the film [[The Blind Goddess (1948
film)|The Blind Goddess]]. She was chosen by Charlie Chaplin in 1952 to appear
in his film [[Limelight (film)|Limelight]], which catapulted Bloom to stardom,
and remains one of her most memorable roles. She was subsequently featured in a
number of "costume" roles in films sych as [[Alexander the Great (1956
film)|Alexander The Great]], [[The Brothers Karamazov]], [[The Buccaneer (1958
film)|The Buccaneer]], and [[The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm]]. Bloom
also appeared in Laurence Olivier's [[Richard III (1955 film)|Richard III]],
Ibsen's [[A Doll's House (1973 Garland film)|A Doll's House]], as well as the
films [[The Spy Who Came in from the cold (film)|The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold]] and [[Look Back in Anger (film)|Look Back in Anger]], both with Richard
Burton.

In the 1960s she began to play more contemporary roles, including an unhinged
housewife in [[The Chapman Report]], a psychologist in the Oscar winning film
[[Charly]], and Theodora in [[The Haunting (1963 film)|The Haunting]]. She also
appeared in the 1989 Woody Allen film [[Crimes and Misdemeanors]]. Her most
recent appearance in a Hollywood film was in the 1996 Sylvester Stallone film
[[Daylight (film)|Daylight]].

Bloom has appeared in several films, series and serials for television, perhaps
the most memorable of which was her portrayal of Lady Marchmain in [[Brideshead
Revisited]] (1981). Other roles included two prominent BBC Television
productions for director Rudolph Cartier; co-starring with Sean Connery in
[[Anna Karenina]] (1961), and playing Cathy in [[Wuthering Heights]] with Keith
Michell as Heathcliff (1962). She also appeared as
First Lady Edith Wilson in [[Backstairs at the White House]] (1979); as Joy
Gresham, the wife of C. S. Lewis in [[Shadowlands]] (For that performance she
received the BAFTA Award as Best Actress. (1985), and as the older Sophy in the
1992 miniseries [[The Camomile Lawn]] on Britain's Channel 4. Her most recent
appearance in a miniseries was in the 2006 version of [[The Ten Commandments
(2006)|The Ten Commandments]].

On continuing television series, she has appeared on the New York-based [[Law &
Order: Criminal Intent]]. From 1991 to 1993, she portrayed villainess Orlena
Grimaldi on the daytime drama [[As The World Turns]]. She also had major roles
in several of the BBC-Shakespeare Play television presentations and has led
workshops on Shakespearean performance practices.

In January 2006, she appeared on the London stage in Arthur Allan Seidelman's
production of [[Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks]] by Richard Alfieri, a two-
hander in which she co-starred with Billy Zane.

Personal life Bloom has been married three times. Her first marriage, in 1959,
to actor Rod Steiger, whom she had met when they both performed in the play
Rashomon. Their daughter is opera singer Anna Steiger. Steiger and Bloom
divorced in 1969. In that same year, Bloom married producer Hillard Elkins. The
marriage lasted three years and the couple divorced in 1972. Bloom's third
marriage in 1991 was to writer Philip Roth, her longtime companion. The couple
divorced in 1995.

Bloom has written two memoirs about her life and career. The first, [[Limelight
and After: The Education of an Actress]], was released in 1982 and was an in-
depth look at her career and the film and stage roles she had portrayed. Her
second book, [[Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir]], was published in 1996, and
went into greater details about her personal life; she discussed not only her
marriages but her romantic relationships with Richard Burton and Laurence
Olivier. The book created a stir when Bloom detailed the highly complicated
relationship between her and Philip Roth during their marriage. The details
Bloom shared were unflattering to Roth, and created a controversy regarding the
true nature of their relationship. The character of Eve Frame in Roth's 1998
novel [[I Married a Communist]] is clearly intended as a retort.

References

External links
* http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/27069/i-have-kept-a-sense-of-
wonder.thtml * *[http://www.theatre.com/story/id/3004937 2006 Interview with
Claire Bloom on Theatre.com] *