Claire Bloom

Patricia Claire Bloom was born on 15 February 1931 in Finchley, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume. Her paternal grandparents, originally named Blumenthal, and her maternal grandparents, originally named Gravitzky, were Jewish emigrants from Byten in the Grodno region of Russia. Bloom's early education was irregular; she attended the independent Badminton School in Bristol before her father's financial difficulties prompted a family move to Cornwall, where she enrolled in the local village school. When the Luftwaffe began bombing London during the Blitz in 1940, Bloom, her mother, and her brother John traveled first to Florida, where they lived with a paternal uncle's family for a year, and then to New York, where they stayed with her mother's cousin for a further eighteen months. It was in New York that Bloom resolved to become an actress, after attending a Broadway production of Three Sisters on her twelfth birthday. The family returned to England in 1943. Bloom later studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and continued her training under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then housed in the Royal Albert Hall.

Bloom made her stage debut in 1946 with the Oxford Repertory Theatre at the age of fifteen. The following year she appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as Ophelia, with Paul Scofield and Robert Helpmann alternating in the title role of Hamlet. Her London stage debut came in 1947 in Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, which starred John Gielgud and Pamela Brown and also featured a young Richard Burton. It was during rehearsals for that production that Bloom and Burton began a long personal relationship. She subsequently received acclaim for her portrayal of Ophelia opposite Burton in a later production of Hamlet. Critic Kenneth Tynan described her Juliet in Romeo and Juliet as the finest he had ever seen, and Tennessee Williams, after she starred as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, declared himself "absolutely wild about Claire Bloom."

Bloom made her Broadway debut in Richard II in 1956, launching a stage career in New York that extended through 1998. Her Broadway credits include The Innocents, Vivat! Vivat Regina!, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, and Electra, among other productions. She received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1971 and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role in Electra in 1999.

Bloom's film career began with The Blind Goddess in 1948. Her international breakthrough came in 1952 when Charlie Chaplin cast her opposite him in Limelight, in which she played a suicidal ballerina suffering from hysterical paralysis. The role brought her the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She went on to appear in Richard III in 1955, Alexander the Great in 1956, The Brothers Karamazov in 1958, The Haunting in 1963, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold in 1965, Charly in 1968, a film adaptation of A Doll's House in 1973, Clash of the Titans in 1981, and Shadowlands in 1985, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress. Later screen work included Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989 and Mighty Aphrodite in 1995, as well as a portrayal of Queen Mary in The King's Speech in 2010. Her film career placed her alongside 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.

In addition to her BAFTA Awards, Bloom received an Emmy Award and nominations for both a Grammy Award and a Tony Award. In the 2013 Birthday Honours, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.