Claire Bloom has appeared in numerous stage and screen productions, including the films Look Back in Anger (1958), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Sammy and Rosie (1987), and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and a huge number of stage performances of Shakespeare, and television roles in Brideshead Revisited and The Claire Bloom Show.

She began her career as Ophelia in a Stratford-upon-Avon production of Hamlet at the age of 17. She has been married twice, first to Rod Steiger and then to Philip Roth.