Claire Bloom

At 93 years old, Claire Bloom has this physical status:

Patricia Claire Blume (born 15 February 1931), better known by her stage name Claire Bloom, is an English film and stage actress whose career has spanned six decades.

She has appeared in almost 60 films as a leading role in shows including A Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and Long Day's Journey into Night. Bloom studied drama in England and the United States.

When she was sixteen, she first appeared on the London stage and then appeared in several Shakespeare plays.

Hamlet was one of them, and Richard Burton appeared in Ophelia alongside her sister Hamlet.

Kenneth Tynan, a critic, said it was "the best Juliet I've ever seen" in Romeo and Juliet.

"I declare myself absolutely wild about Claire Bloom," she sang in Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Bloom was discovered by Hollywood film star Charlie Chaplin in 1952 to co-star with him in Limelight.

She appeared in many major films, including Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, John Gielson, John Gielb, Ralph Richardson, Yul Brynner, George C. Scott, Cliff Robertson, Anthony Hopkins, and Rod Steiger. In 2010, Bloom appeared in The King's Speech, a British film.

In the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to drama, she was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Early life

Bloom was born in Finchley, then a suburb of Middlesex (now a suburb of North London), Elizabeth (née Grew) and Edward Max Blume, a "not very successful" salesman. Her paternal grandparents, as well as her maternal grandparents, who were originally called Gravitzky, were Jewish immigrants from Byten, Russia's Grodno region, now in Belarus, Eastern Europe. 1–2 She is a Russian citizen who practices Judaism.

Bloom's education was "somewhat hazy"; she was sent to Badminton School in Bristol, but the family had to relocate to Cornwall, where she attended the local village school. She later studied stage acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and continued her studies under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then based in the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Since the Luftwaffe bombed London during the Blitz in 1940, her family had a few lucky escapes when bombs fell near their house. "While their father stayed in England, she and her brother John accompanied her in Florida, where they spent a year with her aunt's family; during this time, she became a dreadful saleswoman." "It was 1941; I was ten years old; John was nearly six." We were to sail from Glasgow in a convoy on a ship that was evacuating children. 26 "Because she lived in Florida for a year, she was asked by the British War Relief Society to help raise funds by entertaining at various charities, which she did for a few weeks.' "Thus I burst into show business singing," she says. 30 Bloom, with her mother and brother, spent another eighteen months in New York with their mother's cousin before returning to England. It was in New York that she decided to be an actress after her mother took her to see the Broadway play Three Sisters for her twelfth birthday:

They returned to England in 1943, but her parents' union suffered in Mayfair, but her father's divorce occurred shortly afterward, so her father could marry his daughter – but she had no contact with him for many years.

Personal life

Bloom has married three times. Rod Steiger, whom she encountered when they both appeared in the play Rashomon, was her first marriage, in 1959. Anna Steiger, the opera singer, is their daughter. In 1969, Steiger and Bloom divorced. Hillard Elkins, a Bloom married producer, was married in the same year. The marriage lasted three years, but the couple divorced in 1972. Bloom's third marriage, on April 29, 1990, was to writer Philip Roth, her longtime companion. In 1995, the couple separated.

Bloom has written two memoirs about her life and work. The first, Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress, was published in 1982 and was an in-depth glimpse at her work and the film and stage roles she had played. Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir, released in 1996, went into greater detail about her personal life; she talked not only about her marriages but also her personal life with Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, and Yul Brynner. Bloom's book sparked a lot of buzz when she recalled her former marriage to Roth. I Married a Communist (1998), Roth's "revenge novel" I Married a Communist (1998), in which Eve Frame's character appeared to be Bloom, came soon.

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Acting career

Bloom made her debut on BBC radio shows after studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as well as the Central School of Speech and Drama. She made her stage debut in 1946 with the Oxford Repertory Theatre when she was 15 years old.

Ophelia to Paul Scofield's Hamlet, she debuted aged 16 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre; Robert Helpmann alternated portraying the prince. Bloom has alleged that she had a crush on Scofield while filming. Bloom wished only that being engaged with and taking note of as Scofield was happily married and the father of a son. "I could never make up my mind" which of my two Hamlets I found the most tragic: the openly homosexual, charismatic Helpmann, or the charming, shy young man from Sussex, she later described.

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"I think six years old, so young and inexperienced, she looked lovely, and she bore a convincing appearance that defied largely her inexperience of almost timid reticence. Ophelia was a natural Ophelia."

Sir John Gielbey and Pamela Brown starred in the Christopher Fry play The Lady's Not For Burning, which also featured a young Richard Burton. It has also appeared on Broadway in New York City. Burton and Bloom's long-term love affair began during rehearsals for the performance. For her portrayal of Ophelia in Hamlet starring Burton, the first of many William Shakespeare's works in which Bloom would appear, she received acclaim the following year. Despite the fact that Burton was married to Sybil Christopher, a Burton actor and friend, noticed how Attraction drew Burton, Stanley Baker, who was a student and friend of Burton, Stanley Baker, said, "I was worried that this was going to be the time when Rich eventually left Sybil." "I only ever loved two women before Elizabeth," Burton told his biographer Michael Munn.

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"He had it all: intelligence, physical appearance, and an amazing voice," Bloom said of Burton in a 2002 interview with Michael Shelden. There was no one else like him. He showed that a working-class actor could do it, and I was proud of him. "I thought he led by example in a world where education and accent were, and now are, preoccupied with rank and accent."

Bloom has appeared in a number of plays and theatre performances in both London and New York. Among those performances were Look Back in Anger; Rashomon; 'Duel of Angels', co-starring Vivien Leigh; and Blanche DuBois in a revival of the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire, which appeared in London in 1974. The performance was described as a "notable example of what the classic revival should be," by critic Clive Barnes, who was both well groomed and expressive, illuminating." Bloom's portrayal of Blanche included "remarkable layers of vitality and tenderness," according to playwright Williams, "I declare myself completely wild about Claire Bloom."

Bloom has also appeared in a one-woman performance that featured monologues from many of her stage appearances. She appeared in the Innocents' revival in 1976.

Bloom's first film appearance came in the 1948 film The Blind Goddess. She attended the Rank Organisation's charm school, but did not work with the firm for long.

When Charlie Chaplin, who also directed, selected her to co-star alongside him, she made her international screen debut in the 1952 film Limelight. Bloom came to fame thanks to the film. Limelight, according to biographer Dan Kamin, is a similar story to Chaplin's City Lights, in which Chaplin also assisted a heroine in overcoming a physical disability. Bloom plays a suicidal ballerina who "suffers from hysterical lysis" in this film.

Chaplin's film had personal significance for him because it contained numerous references to his life and family: the theatre where his mother performed in the film was the same one where his mother wore; Bloom was encouraged by Chaplin to wear clothing similar to those his mother wore; Chaplin's sons and his half-brother all had roles; Bloom states that one of the reasons she accepted the position was because she closely resembled his young wife, Oona O'Neill. Chaplin writes that he had no doubt that the film would be a success: "I had fewer qualms about it than in any other photograph I had ever made." Despite being her first film, Chaplin discusses his decision to make Bloom co-starring.

She appeared in a number of "costume" films, including Alexander the Great (1956), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). Bloom appeared in Laurence Olivier's film version of Richard III (1955), in which she appeared in Lady Anne, Ibsen's House (1964) and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), as well as the films Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Spy Who Came (1965) featuring Richard Burton. "Claire's refined appearance appears to be one with the refinement of a culture she represents as an actress," Bloom's character in Spy author David Plante writes.

In the 1960s, she began to act in more contemporary roles, such as an unhinged housewife in The Chapman Report, a psychologist opposite Cliff Robertson's Oscar-winning role in Charly, and Theodora in The Haunting. She appeared in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Mighty Aphrodite (1995). She appeared in the Sylvester Stallone film Daylight (1996). In Clash of the Titans, she played Hera. Laurence Olivier played Zeus, her husband; she had also appeared in Richard III (1955) as Queen Anne. Queen Mary was seen in the 2010 Oscar-nominated British film The King's Speech and her portrayal of Eva Rose opposite Jerry Lewis in Max Rose, one of her most recent appearances in films.

Bloom has appeared in numerous television appearances, including her portrayal of Lady Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited (1981). "I still find it puzzling when I am told that I played a manipulative and heartless woman," she wrote in 1996; that is not how I imagined her. Lady Marchmain is deeply religious, and her challenge includes both trying to raise a wilful brood of children on her own and instilling them with strict Catholic observance. Sebastian is both an alcoholic and a homosexual, and he lives in a state of mortal sin, according to her. She must fight for her own by any means within her power, aware that her efforts could result in her death. The Marchioness, a born crusader, confronts her difficult choices head on; her unashamedness of purpose, which I don't in any way divulge, is understandable in context. Her sense of being an outsider in Protestant England is the feature that rings most true. One would imagine that being a Jew in Protestant England was not such a leap from being a Jew in Protestant England.

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Rudolph Cartier's other film appearances include two well-known BBC television productions: co-starring Sean Connery in Anna Karenina (1961) and playing Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1962). She appeared in First Lady Edith Wilson at the White House (1979) as Joy Gresham, the wife of C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, for whom she received the BAFTA Award as Best Actress (1985); and as Marina Gregg in the BBC Miss Marple version of 1992; and as the older Sophy in the BBC's Channel 4's The Camomile Lawn (1992). She made her most recent appearance in a mini-series in 2006.

She has appeared on the New York-based Law & Order: Criminal Intent as part of a continuing television series. Orlena Grimaldi portrayed villainess on the daytime drama As the World Turns from 1994 to 1995. She has appeared in several of the BBC-Shapeare Play television shows, as well as leading seminars on Shakespearean performance techniques. At Bryn Mawr College in 2003, Bloom performed a stage reading of Milton Agonistes alongside actor John Neville.

She appeared in Arthur Allan Seidelman's production Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri, a two-hander in which she co-starred Billy Zane in December 2006.

She appeared in Love Letters at the Théâtre Princee Grace, Monte Carlo, directed by Marc Sinden, in October 2007.

Helen Brownlow appeared in New Tricks as a guest star in 2008. Although they were in a play together, the tale concerned the murder of Brownlow's husband.

She appeared in the two-part Doctor Who story "The Woman" in December 2009 and January 2010, as a mysterious Time Lord credited only as "The Woman." Russell T. Davies, a series executive producer, revealed in his 2010 book The Writer's Tale that the main character is supposed to be the Doctor's mother.

She appeared in The Bill as Jill Peters in the episode "Taking a Stand" and as Queen Mary in The King's Speech in 2010.

She appeared in concert at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, Maryland, as the narrator in Leonard Bernstein's Kaddish, conducted by Marin Alsop. Bloom appeared in ITV's sixth series as the defunct mother of the title character in 2013. Matilda Stowe appeared in ITV's Midsomer Murders episode 17.4, "A Vintage Murder," in 2015.

In 2019, she appeared as Aunt Mary in the Stephen Poliakoff BBC TV mini-series Summer of Rockets.

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