Claire Bloom Biography

Fast Facts

• Debuted on the London stage in 1947, and gave an acclaimed performance as Ophelia in a Stratford-upon-Avon production of Hamlet in 1948
• Made her film debut in 1948's The Blind Goddess and achieved stardom as a result of her role in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952)
• Costarred with lover Richard Burton in Alexander the Great (1956), Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965)
• Appeared in two Woody Allen films: as Martin Landau's wife in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and in the chorus of Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
• Her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, recounts the unraveling of her marriage to author Philip Roth, whom she threatened with a lawsuit when he planned to give her name to an unsympathetic character in his novel Deception