Biography
While taking drama lessons at Badminton, Guildhall School, and the Central School of Speech and Drama, Claire Bloom began appearing on BBC radio, and made her stage debut at 15 with the Oxford Repertory. She made her London bow in 1947, and the following year was effusively praised for her performance as Ophelia in a Stratford-upon-Avon production of Hamlet. Also in 1948, she appeared in her first film,
The Blind Goddess (1948). While gainfully employed at the Old Vic in 1952, Bloom was selected by
Charlie Chaplin to portray the suicidal ballerina Terry in Chaplin's
Limelight. Though the film was inadequately distributed due to Chaplin's "questionable" political beliefs,
Limelight made Bloom an overnight star -- after only nine years in the business. Her next major film assignment was Lady Anne in Olivier's
Richard III (1955), which led to a steady stream of costume roles in films like
Alexander the Great (1956),
The Brothers Karamazov (1959),
The Buccaneer (1959), and
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). Of her "contemporary" film roles, several are standouts: the sexually unstable housewife in
The Chapman Report, the lesbian psychic in
The Haunting (1963), the compassionate psychiatrist in
Charly (1968), and
Martin Landau's Jewish-suburbanite wife in
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Her TV work has included Edith Galt Wilson in
Backstairs at the White House (1979) and Lady Marchman in
Brideshead Revisited (1982). Whenever her schedule has allowed, Bloom has returned to her first love, the theater; her favorite stage role is Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Married three times, Bloom's first husband was actor
Rod Steiger, with whom she co-starred in 3 Into 2 Won't Go (1969) and
The Illustrated Man (1969); her second was producer Hillard Elkins, who packaged Bloom's 1973 film version of The Doll's House; and her third was novelist Philip Roth. In 1982, Claire Bloom published her autobiography, Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide