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Claire Bloom
Born in London, Claire Bloom made her first appearance on the stage with
the Oxford Repertory Company at sixteen. Her first major role came a year
later-Ophelia at Stratford-Upon-Avon opposite the alternating Hamlets of
Paul Scofield and Robert Helpmann. Her first London appearance was as
Alizon Eliot in John Gielgud's production of Christopher Fry's The Lady's
Not for Burning, opposite Richard Burton. Her performance in Peter Brook's
production of Jean Anouilh's Ring Around the Moon, also starring Paul
Scofield, led to the role of Teresa in Charles Chaplin's 1952 film
Limelight. Since then Ms. Bloom has divided her career between England and
the United States. Her films include The Man Between, Richard III, Look
Back in Anger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Charley, A Doll's House,
Islands in the Stream, Clash of the Titans, Sammy and Rosie, and Woody
Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors and Mighty Aphrodite. Her most notable
stage roles have included Juliet, Ophelia, Viola, Miranda, and Cordelia at
the Old Vic In London's West End she has appeared as Sasha in Ivanov, Nora
in A Doll's House, Rebecca West in Romersholm, and Mme. Ranyeskvya in The
Cherry Orchard, and, at the Almeida in 1990, as Irena in When We Dead
Awaken. In 1974 she won the three major English theatrical awards for her
London portrayal of Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire. In New
York Ms. Bloom has been seen in leading roles in A Doll's House, Hedda
Gabler, Rashomon, Vivat! Vivat! Regina!, the stage version of Henry James's
Turn of the Screw, and, most recently, Clytemnestra in Electra, for which
she earned both a Tony nomination and the Outer Critics Circle Award for
best featured actress. Ms. Bloom also appeared as Katherine of Aragon in
Henry VIII, as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, as Lady Constance in King John,
and as the Queen in Cymbeline for the BBC Shakespeare television series.
Her many other television appearance include Brideshead Revisited (in which
she and Laurence Olivier played Lady and Lord Marchmain), Philip Roth's The
Ghost Writer, Shadowlands (for which she won Britain's BAFTA Award for the
best television actress of the year), The Camomile Lawn, The Mirror Crack'd
From Side to Side, Village Affairs, Family Money, What the Deaf Man Heard,
and Imogen's Face. Claire Bloom appears with flutist Eugenia Zukerman and
pianist Brian Zeger in a recital of "Words and Music'; with her daughter,
the soprano Anna Steiger, in a recital entitled "Women in Poetry and Song";
and in another recital with Brian Zeger of texts spoken to music by Lee
Hoiby, Ned Rorem, and Robin Holloway. Ms. Bloom has appeared as narrator
with many leading orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic, the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony. Music
festival appearances have take her to Bard College, Ojai, Ravinia,
Aldeburgh and Tanglewood, where in 1996 she was narrator for a Boston
Symphony performance of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream music. Also
in 1996, she returned to the American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge,
Massachusetts) for A Long Day's Journey Into Night, and her best-selling
memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, was published by Little, Brown.