Claire Bloom is a talented British leading lady with Shakespearean training,
who first made her mark on the Brisitish theater. She was first married to actor Rod Steiger, with whom she has a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger. She was also married to producer Hillard Elkins and novelist Philip Roth. She revealed details of her marriage to Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, published a year after the couple's divorce. She also disclosed her liaisons with actors Sir Lawrence Olivier and Richard Burton in the same book.
Claire Bloom's defining role which lifted her into the international
spotlight in film was her role in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight,
in 1952. Since then, Bloom has distinguished herself with
many fine performances in a 116 films and television projects.
In 1963, Claire Bloom starred in the horror classic, THE HAUNTING, as the clairvoyant Theadora, who becomes part of a collection of eccentric characters, who get more than they bargained for, when they inhabit a house with a history of ghosts and murders as part of a scientific study.
In 1965 Claire Bloom played with Richard Burton in THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, as the Communist librarian Nan Perry, a woman in jeopardy, with whom Burton's character falls in love with in his demoralizing work as an spy infiltrator working for, and ruthlessly manipulated by, the British government.
Bloom played in the Woody Allen movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS [1989], as Miriam Rosenthal, wife of a man with no moral scrupples, who orders the execution of his long-time, secret mistress, when she threatens to reveal their relationship to his wife.
In 2010, Claire Bloom portrayed Queen Mary in THE KING'S SPEECH, with Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter.
Claire Bloom - MovieActors.com
