Claire Bloom

Patricia Claire Bloom (born 15 February 1931) is an English actress. She is known for leading roles on stage and screen and has received two

After a childhood spent in various places in England and Florida, Bloom studied drama in London. She debuted on the London stage when she was sixteen and took roles in various

Bloom made her film debut in The Blind Goddess (1948). Her breakthrough came with a leading role acting opposite Charlie Chaplin in Limelight (1952) for which she won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She went on to act in films such as Richard III (1955), Alexander the Great (1956), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), The Haunting (1963), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965), Charly (1968), A Doll's House (1973), Clash of the Titans (1981), and Shadowlands (1985). For the latter she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress. She later acted in the Woody Allen films Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Mighty Aphrodite (1995), and portrayed Queen Mary in historical drama The King's Speech (2010).

During her film career, she has starred alongside numerous major actors, including Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson, Yul Brynner, George C. Scott, James Mason, Paul Newman, Julie Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Rod Steiger and Jerry Lewis.

Bloom was born on 15 February 1931 as Patricia Claire Blume in Finchley,^[1] then part of Middlesex (now a suburb of north London), the daughter of Elizabeth (née Grew) and Edward Max Blume, a "not very successful" salesman.^[2] Her paternal grandparents, originally named Blumenthal, as well as her maternal grandparents, originally named Gravitzky, were Jewish emigrants from Byten in the Grodno region of Russia, now in Belarus, Eastern Europe.^{[3]: 1–2 [4]}

Bloom's education was "somewhat haphazard"; she was sent to the independent Badminton School in Bristol, but when her father encountered financial difficulties the family relocated to Cornwall, where she attended the local village school. She later studied stage acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London,^[5] and continued her studies under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then based in the Royal Albert Hall, London.^[6]

After the Luftwaffe began bombing London during the Blitz in 1940 her family had a number of narrow escapes as bombs dropped close to their home. While their father remained in England, she and her brother John went with their mother to the United States, where she spent a year living in Florida with a paternal uncle's family; during this time her mother worked in her aunt's dress shop, "but she proved to be a dreadful saleswoman".^[7][2][8] She recalls, "It was 1941; I was ten, John was nearly six. We were to sail from Glasgow in a convoy, on a ship that was evacuating children."^[9]: 26 During her year's stay in Florida, she was asked by the British War Relief Society to help raise money by entertaining at various benefits, which she then did for a number of weeks. "Thus I broke into show business singing", she writes.^[9]: 30 Bloom, along with her mother and brother, next lived in New York with their mother's cousin for another eighteen months before returning to England. It was in New York that she decided to become an actress, after her mother took her to see the Broadway play Three Sisters for her twelfth birthday:

From then on I thought only of going into the theatre and playing in

Chekhov. ... Chekhov was moving. That's what I was looking for—something more moving even than my own plight as a little English girl driven from my home by the Gods of War.^[9]

^: 36

They returned to England in 1943, and due to her father's improved business lived in Mayfair, but her parents' marriage ended shortly afterwards – so her father could marry his girlfriend – and she had no contact with him for many years.[7]^[2]

Bloom made her debut on

Bloom's first film role was in the 1948 film

The film had personal meaning for Chaplin as it contained numerous references to his life and family: the theatre where he and Bloom performed in the film was the same theatre where his mother gave her last performance;^[citation needed] Bloom was directed by Chaplin to wear dresses similar to those his mother used to wear; Chaplin's sons and his half-brother all had parts.^[14] Bloom states that she felt one of the reasons she got the part was because she closely resembled his young wife, Oona O'Neill.^[15][16][12] In his autobiography, Chaplin writes that he had no doubt the film would be a success: "I had fewer qualms about its success than any picture I had ever made."^[13] Chaplin explains his decision to make Bloom co-star despite this being her first film:

In casting the girl's part I wanted the impossible: beauty, talent, and a great emotional range. After months of searching and testing with disappointing results, I eventually had the good fortune to sign up Claire Bloom, who was recommended by my friend Arthur Laurents.^[17][18]

She was subsequently featured in a number of "costume" roles in films such as

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), both with Richard Burton.^[12] Of Bloom's character in Spy, novelist David Plante writes that "Claire's refined beauty appears to be one with the refinement of a culture she represents as an actress."^[23] In a 2002 interview with Michael Shelden, Bloom said of Burton, "He had it all: intelligence, physical beauty, an incredible voice. There was no one else like him. When we were at the Old Vic, he proved that a working-class actor could make it, and I was proud of him. I thought he set a great example in a society that was, and still is, so preoccupied with class and accent."^[20]

1970–1989: Theatre roles and acclaim

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; 'Duel of Angels' (by Jean Giraudoux), co-starring with Vivien Leigh, in 1958;^[24] and Bloom's favourite role, that of Blanche DuBois, in a revival of the Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which played in London in 1974. Critic Clive Barnes described the play as a "notable example of what the classic revival should be – well groomed, but thoughtful, expressive, illuminating."^[25] Another critic writes that Bloom's portrayal of Blanche featured "remarkable layers of vitality and tenderness", and playwright Williams stated, "I declare myself absolutely wild about Claire Bloom."^[25] Bloom has also performed in one-woman shows that included monologues from several of her stage performances.^[26][27] She also starred in the 1976 Broadway revival of The Innocents.^[28] In the 1960s she began to play more contemporary roles, including an unhinged housewife in The Chapman Report,^[12] a psychologist opposite Cliff Robertson's Oscar-winning role in Charly,^[29] and Theodora in The Haunting.^[2] She played Hera in Clash of the Titans, reuniting her with Olivier who played Zeus.

Bloom has appeared in numerous roles on television such as her portrayal of Lady Marchmain in

Brideshead Revisited (1981).^[12] In 1996, she wrote, "I still find it puzzling when I am told I played a manipulative and heartless woman; that is not how I saw her. Lady Marchmain is deeply religious, and her dilemma includes trying to raise a wilful brood of children on her own, while instilling them with her rigid observance of the Catholic code. Sebastian is both an alcoholic and a homosexual, and from her point of view, he lives in a state of mortal sin. She has to fight for his soul by any means in her power, with the knowledge that her efforts may lead to his destruction. A born crusader, the Marchioness confronts her difficult choices head on; her rigidity of purpose, which I don't in any way share, is understandable in context. The aspect that rings most true is her sense of being an outsider, a Catholic in Protestant England. Not such a leap from being a Jew in Protestant England as one would imagine."^[3]

^: 162

Other work includes two prominent

C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands for which she received the BAFTA Award as Best Actress (1985).^[33]

1990–present: Television work and later roles

She also appeared in the