Claire Bloom's role as Clytemnestra in David Leveaux's production of Sophocles' Electra clocks in at around 15 minutes. So a 30-minute interview means a reporter gets twice as much time with Bloom as the audience spends in the vengeful queen's company.
Nothing to sneeze at, particularly when it's five o'clock and Bloom has been gracious enough to postpone a nap between rehearsal and performance. Nonetheless, a half-hour doesn't afford the opportunity to learn much about a woman who was born February 15, 1931 (she says so in her recent memoir, Leaving a Doll's House), and has been acting to great aclaim since the late 40's. Clearly, she's not going to dispense elaborate anecdotes about, say, her time with the Old Vic when it was the Old Vic; about playing opposite Charlie Chaplin in Limelight when she was about 20; about acting- and falling in love- with Richard Burton when she was 22 and he was 27; about everything that's happened to her since, including the marriages to Rod Steiger, Producer Hillard Elkins, and Philip Roth.
No time to waste, then when Bloom is met in a busy Barrymore Theatre reception area she shares with Zoe Wanamaker. She rises and extends her hand, then sits once more on a pea-green sofa. She's wearing a simple black dress and a granny scarf that comes in handy as a prop. (She can fiddle with it.)
In response to an opening question about her long absence from Broadway, Bloom says simply, "I've done my plays elsewhere." There's something tough in the reply, as indeed there is in many of the replies. Bloom doesn't so much suggest grace under pressure as give the impression that she's equal parts grace and pressure. She's undeniably regal- and knows how to work it- but there is something in her that seems familiar with resentment. These attributes, needless to point out, are helpful for anyone playing Clytemnestra.
Which Bloom is doing now because, as she puts it, "Why not" The role has size, dimension." And she's doing it because she evidently has gotten over her anger at having her last Broadway venture, The Innocents, panned by Clive Barnes- whose name she mentions as if it had been dipped in poison. "It was a good production," she says, still irritated 22 years later. "It would have run for six months, nine months, but for one bad review..." Ah, but Clytemnestra. Was she frightened to take on the role after such a long time away? " I was. I thought I would have to be six feet five inches tall. Then I realized Clytemnestra is a grieving mother." Of Leveaux's acclaimed production, she says, "This has been one of the happiest experiences I've ever had, because the people I'm working with are so good, so talented, so intelligent.
In Bloom's startingly honest memoir, she calls actors outsiders. Does she still- after this happy venture, after the people she's known, the classic roles she's landed, the movie stardom, the spreads in Time, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar- feel she;s an outsider? "I am," she says at once. "It's not a matter of feeling it, it's a matter of thinking it. It's a particular type of temperament. I've spent my life pursing excellence as an artist, which is what I always wanted to do anyhow. I don't dnjoy the life of an actress, but I don't want to go into that. I am interested in the art." She thinks it over. "I'm a professional woman."
A professional woman who, as she's practiced her art, has simultaneously had to handle fame. "I never though about that," Bloom claims. "[Fame] enable me to get wonderful roles. It opened doors. As you know, work follows work. 'Success,' I would say is the word."
Asked about her memories of London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Bloom says, "My training was not good. It was all elocution then. It was not stimulating. There was good voice production; that I'll admit. I learned from watching and I learned form doing." Does a brilliant career, then, simply land in one's lap? "I had a burning ambition," she allows. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have accomplished it."
Her Ophelia to Burton's Hamlet put her on the map; her Lady Anne opposite Laurence Olivier in the film of Richard III put her on the cover of Life. Since she's worked with so many superlative actors from late adolescence- and hobnobbed with the likes of Robert Helpmann, Paul Scofield and Old Vic director Michael Benthall- could she articulate what she learned from any of them? The question vexes her. "I learned from watching, and people learned from me,: she says in an adamant tone. "Burton was my age when we were acting together." Okay, what was she absorbing from directors like Benthall? "He was a charming man, but directing was diferent then. It was decorative. I don't remember any discussion of character or motivation, which is what acting is. That was all done by the actors in the dressing room. The conversation there was fascinating."
What about those actors? What about Ralph Richardson? "Richardson was the greatest character actor of our time- the most human. Not a heroic actor." Gielgud? "Great physical beauty, a scholar. They all were. You can't act at that level if you're not." Scofield? "Scofield is a mystery to me." Since she's reported having affairs with her leading men- Buirton and Olivier prominent among them- would she say such liasons occur inevitably? Another Cheshire cat smile. "It often does in many people's careers, and for a while, it's the real thing."
The reception area continues busy. A handyman comes in looking for a missing toilet. Zoe Wanamaker- all spiked hair, sloping nose, and blank-eyed preoccupation- surges by. Bloom maintains her composure and her distance. As a Jewish girl whose father left her, her mother, and her brother to fend for themselves during the war, she may not have been born to the purple, but she has acquired the manners that accompany privilege. It's apparent that few things faze her, and when they do, she's not going to let on.
In her boook, Bloom recalls that when making Limelight, Chaplin told her exactly how to play her role as the stricken ballerina by demonstrating what he wanted. "He was more charming, more feminine than anyone you could imagine," she says. Pressed for other directors she values, she brings up Ron Daniels, for whom she played Mary Tyrone last year in Long Day's Journey Into Night at the American Repertory Theater, and Electra director David Leveaux. These recent colleagues fulfill the role of director as Bloom alwys envisioned it. It was Leaveaux, she says, who was indispensable in helping locate Clytemnestra's humanity as well as her animal nature. She's also grateful to Tony Richardson, who guided her opposite Burton in the movie adaption of Look Back in Anger. "He came along at an important time in my career. He gave me the courage to experiment."
Although she is enjoying her Electra stint- Tony talk has already started- Bloom "rarely does plays." On the other hand, she doesn't want to sit around waiting for the phone to ring." So for some time she's been carpentering one-woman shows, including her new one, Enter the Actress (recently at Symphony Space), for which she did all the research and writing. She maintains she won't do another book to follow Leaving a Doll's House, which many reviewers thought was primarily her chance to trash Philip Roth. As an actress, she says, she's "deflecting emotion, trying to get into the sould of another person. In my book, I was trying to get into my own soul." (A question about showing up as a character in her third ex-husband's novels was quickly squelched.)
Someone else hurtles into the room- a press agent who's been watching a clock tick past the half-hour mark. "I'm still learning." Bloom says in departure. "In any of the arts, you never stop learning." Does she feel satisfaction as she comes off stage or sees herself in a film? "Yeah, sometimes. It's the biggest high you can get."
DAVID FINKLE most recently interviewed Tony Shalhoub for In Theater ________________________________________________________________________________________

Photos: Black and white photo of Claire by a chair, wearing a black shawl, "Bloom as Clytemnestra in Electra";
Black and white photo from film Richard III, "As Lady Anne to Laurence Olivier's Richard III; Black and white photo - "On the balcony with John Neville in Romeo and Juliet."