‘I have kept a sense of wonder’

27 December 2006

In a rare interview, the actress Claire Bloom talks to Tim Walker about her divorce from Philip Roth, dancing with Billy Zane and her enduring passion for the stage

‘I am contracted to this play until March, so this room will pretty much be my home until then. A long run means a rather solitary life. One can’t see one’s friends, except perhaps if they come backstage after the show. One has to ration one’s energy, certainly in this play when I am on stage the whole time with Billy Zane, in turn exchanging dialogue with him and dancing with him. It’d take a lot out of anyone.’

Throughout her life, even when she has been under the periods of greatest stress, she has always been the consummate professional, never once missing a performance. Acting has, I suggest, turned out to be the most enduring love affair of her life and she does not demur. ‘I seem somehow to have kept alive in me that sense of wonder that we all have when we are children and we pretend to be someone we are not.’

Miss Bloom seldom grants interviews these days and certainly abhors the cult of celebrity. ‘Even the word makes me sick. Some actors and actresses do seem to seek this dubious status, but it is what we do on stage or on film that matters. What this or that actor thinks about politics is really neither here nor there. I mean, who cares? I most sincerely hope no one takes any notice when members of my profession start talking about such matters.’

For all that, Miss Bloom is defined in the public consciousness not merely by her parts — Lady Marchmain, Terry in Chaplin’s Limelight, and, on stage, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Nora in A Doll’s House — but also the men in her life: Burton, Olivier, Anthony Quinn, Yul Brynner and her three husbands — Rod Steiger, the producer Hillard Elkins and, latterly, Roth.

One of the more memorable lines in her current play is, ‘Everyone pays for sex, one way or another.’ Miss Bloom thinks that’s very true. ‘It’s never straightforward and simple. We always pay an emotional price.’ One wonders if Miss Bloom feels the price has been too high. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘It has been fair. I am still here.’

That there is no man in her life at the moment does not apparently bother her. ‘Of course I would not have asked to be single at this stage in my life, but it is what I have got. I don’t think there will be another man now. I don’t think that I could start again from scratch. I have a lot of friends — and of course I have my daughter — so I don’t feel lonely.’