Claire Bloom was born in London to a father who worked in advertising and a mother who came from a well-to-do family. At an early age she saw a film of Norma Shearer as Juliet and went home and started learning the lines. Her first professional appearance was with the Oxford Repertory Theatre (she had auditioned using Juliet's "poison" speech). When the producers took over the Shakespeare season at Stratford-on-Avon, they engaged her for leading roles. Charlie Chaplin picked Claire as his co-star in the film Limelight. "I tested hundreds of girls," Chaplin said. "Claire has distinction, and enormous range, and underneath her sadness there is bubbling humor, so unexpected, so wistful." In addition to playing at the Old Vic, Claire's London appearances include The Lady's Not for Burning opposite Richard Burton, Ophelia to Paul Scofield's Hanlet, and Cordelia to John Gielgud's King Lear. On Broadway, Claire has been seen in Rashomon, A Doll's House, and Vivat! Vivat Regina! Her films range from Laurence Olivier's Richard III to Look Back in Anger, to Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. On television she played Lady Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, and starred in The Ghost Writer (based on the novel by her husband, Philip Roth).

Kevin Conway was born in Harlem. "I grew up in Queens and went to a parochial school, thank God. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be here. I've been around a lot and I will still never met anybody as tough as the nuns. I was on my way to being a juvenile delinquent." He saw his first play Stop the World-I Want to Get Off, at age twenty-three and soon after, he started acting lessons "as a gag." Subsequently, Kevin landed a part in The Impossible Years! with Tom Ewell. He started to attract attention with roles like Teddy in When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? for which he won the Obie and Drama Desk awards, and as George opposite James Earl Jones in the New York Shakespeare Festival's Of Mice and Men. He created the part of Doctor Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man, taking the show from off-Broadway to full houses on Broadway. He also originated the role of Larry the Liquidator in Other People's Money and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance. Kevin's films include F.I.S.T., Paradise Alley, Homeboy, and Rambling Rose. He's been featured on television in such films as PBS's The Lathe of Heaven, The Deadliest Season with Meryl Streep and Something about Amanda.

Years ago, I had seen Claire Bloom as Lady Anne in Laurence Olivier's film version of Richard III, and I had marveled at her ability to change emotional direction at the drop of a cue. One minute she was all venom and anger, and then without warning she became vulnerable and voluntarily susceptible to danger. When I went to see Kevin Conway in the off-Broadway production of Other People's Money, he seemed to possess some of the same potential for mercurial emotional change. In one instant he went from the ruthless, takeover mentality of Larry the Liquidator, intent on squeezing the last dollar out of every helpless company he could find, to a softer personality capable of succumbing to the feminine charms of his legal counterpaart. I decided that it would be interesting to invite Claire and Kevin for one of our sessions.
They were opposites in temperament and style. Claire had a cool grace; her mouth was taut and her voice with its British accent, was pure silk. Kevin was a tough-talking New yorker, with an easy smile and hands that gestured expansively whenever he spoke. I began by describing the ways actors develop a character. Some work from the outside, starting, for example, with the character's shoes. Some begin by working from the inside, trying to deal with the character's feelings. Others concern themselves with the character's motives. Regardless of the initial approach to the role, the actor has to be sensitive to the feelings and emotions of the character he hopes to portray. I asked Claire and Kevin to discuss the nature of that sensitivity.
"Everybody is born with it," said Claire. "You then use it in your profession. You use your initiative understanding of people or semi-understanding of yourself and your own peculiar motives. Actors use everything they can get.
"It's got to be a bit of everything to be truly successful," said Kevin, "One of the problems that a lot of actors have is that they are very good at one thing. They've got great technique and are not so good on the inner life. Great inner life, not so good on technique. You have to be well-rounded intellectually, emotionally, and nothing should escape your attention as you wander through your life in terms of little bits and pieces that you can pick up. One of the most successful walks I ever had was in a play I did called When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? I needed the guy to look menacing without forcing it. He wasn't a crazy psycho-type guy. He was a psycho but he couldn't give it away. I basically stole Henry Fonda's walk in a film called Once Upon a Time in the West, in which he had this loping kind of quality. He was the villain and it was a bit more menacing on Henry Fonda than it was on me. But it worked for me to get that feeling of the kind of controlled, unpredictable violence that this character had. It really helped making that kind of pure physical choice.
In addition to being sensitive to other people, real or fictional, the actor must have the ability to express what she feels. Can anyone learn to do this and become an actor? "A lot of people think they can," said Claire. "That is your job, to express your own feelings through your own body, your own character. Where Kevin and I are different is, I probably have only played facets of myself. I've never said, 'I'm going to walk like that,' or taken something totally outside myself and been able to superimpose it on myself or make it part of myself. There are many different kinds of actors. The nearest I've ever come to that is when I played Lady Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. Not only am I not an aristocrat- very few actors are- but I also didn't know any, I did know one and I thought, as she's the only one I know, what I'd better do [is study her]. Without her knowing it, because she's a close friend, I studied the way she spoke and her manner rather than anything specific. I certainly took that for myself and tried to digest it."
"Did you notice yourself really behaving like her?" asked Kevin. "Yes," said Claire. "Then maybe we're not that different," said Kevin. "I don't think everybody can be an actor. There are people who are very naturally gifted, you see them all the time on documentaries and things like that, where they point a camera at some guy and he's very entertaining and wonderful. It's like sports. There are people who are born with a great natural talent. There are people that are born talent that they develop. There are people that are born with talent that they don't develop. And then there are people who are born with absolutely no skill whatsoever in that particular thing, but sometimes they get by anyway just by dint of hard work."
"I would hate to think that just anybody could be an actor," said Claire, "because then there's no point in being one." "Scary", said Kevin.
In 1750 an English actor and playwright named John Hill wrote a book called The Actor: A Treatise on the art of Playing. In it he wrote "Three qualities of a good actor are understanding, sensibility and fire. The actress who has tenderness and sensibility in her nature and whose easily and readily feels every passion that the author intends, is not for that reason to flatter herself that she excel in the profession without fire. To feel the passions we are to point out to others is certainly a necessary first step but it is not all that is expected of the performer." Two hundred and fifty years ago Hill was saying that the actor needs to feel passion in order to express passion. He calls it fire. Can an actor learn to be passionate?
"Of course not," said Claire. "The higher the fire burns, the greater the actor. Kean's fire must have burned at a very high level. Bernhardt, Olivier. It's the gift you have."
"In any profession there are people who approach it with passion and people who approach it another way," said Kevin. "People can learn to tap into passion they didn't know they had. There have been people who have been taciturn in their real life and then you see them on the stage- and boom! By and large it has to be there. It's like a lava flow. It's there amd you can tap into it. I don't think you can invent it or acquire it."
Maybe that's why we thnik what the actor does is magical. "I don't know what is magic," said Claire. "I trhinkit's hard work and skill and talent, and slugging away and learning and keeping your eyes and your ears open. I don't think theater is magic. It can create magic.but I don't think the art is magic."
When Charlie Chaplin cast Claire in Limelight, he praised her for her "enormous range". An example of that range occurs when we first meet Lady Anne in Olivier's Richard III. Claire is grieving over the casket of her dead husband, whom Richard has murdered. Richard enters and begins to woo her. She spits at him, but at the same time we see that part of her is attracted to him. Is this ability to show different colors at the same time something that every actor has to learn?
"How dull it would be if you were only playing one thing," Claire replied. "You would just be a dull actor. You don't learn it. It's in your everyday life. It's in everybody's life. You're not just one thing." Kevin said, "This touches on something a lot of actors don't get much credit for- I guess with some justification- and that's intelligence. When you approach a role, if you've got any intelligence and a sense for the moments that you gatta make to make your character understandable, you're going to find as many colors, as many contradictions, as many complexities as you can, because that's what you get paid for."
"That's what draws you to a role," said Claire. "Otherwise it's a boring role and you are a boring actor and it's going to be a dull performance. You're drawn to complexity. Those are the only parts that are interesting to play."
One of Kevin's most complex characters is Lurence Garfinkle, also known as Larry the Liquidator, a man who annihilates companies in Other People's Money. The New York Times critic said that Kevin's performance drove the whole play. He wrote, "The amoral Garfinkle wastes no time on charm. Yet in Mr. Conway's portrayal, the character has a certain likability." Here again is the ability t present opposites that seem to be at the core of a successful performance. If an actor can make his performance both evil and charming at the same time, then the audience doesn't know what the actor will do next. It makes the character's behavior unpredictable. Is this the key to creating the illusion that what is happening is happening for the first time?
"That's the magic," said Kevin. "You've gotta have that. I've played a lot of villains or guys that were villains acording to the script. The villain doesn't know he's a villain. Most peopel that do lousy things to us think they're doing the right thing. What is interesting about Garfinkle is that he, as is often true about villains, has the best lines. The villains usually have the most interesting conflicts in the script.
There is a common perception that the main difference between English and American acting training is head versus heart. The English stress what are called externals- voice, language, and body movement- while American acting teachers stress what the actor should feel. Claire won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and she studied privately with Eileen Thorndike, the sister of te distinguished actress Dame Sybil Thorndike. Is there such a thing as an English acting technique?
"No such thing," said Claire. "After all our greatest actors were poles apart, Richardson and Olivier. Ralph Richardson was all intrior, and I think the greatest for my taste, but that is where my taste is. How can you act from the outside in ? There's no such thing. Our great actors are the same. Our great actors are like your great actors. All great actors are the same. Vanessa Redgrave is a great actress, because everything comes from inside. What Kevin says is absolutely true. If you're playing somone totally different from yourself, what Kevin did with Garfinkle is what one would do. I've never played anyone that far away from myself. Olivier had a conception of what Richard would look like. Most of us do when we're playing a role, even if it's close to you, or a little further away."
"I just did a very peculiar play in London called When We Dead Awaken, and my character was described by Ibsen very clearly as dressed all in white like a nun, white head, with a white cashmere shawl. I tried to follow that. It helped me to have that picture. For example, playing Ibsen, I went to exhibition of Munch, and I got a book of the work of Munch and I would look at one of his women and I'd think, 'This is her,' but that doesn't mean that I was working from the outside in. The core of what you're doing is something completely different. If anybody thinks it's dressing up, they've got another thing coming. It's nothing to do with that at all. That's only a very small part of what we do."
Kevin said "I think there's a misinterpretation of what Stanislavski was saying about the art of acting. Some actors get too "Hey, I'm de king of France,'" (Kevin began to move around in his chair with a swagger)" 'dat's de way I feel like playing the king of France, because I feel like, uhhh, I want tuhhh.' To them they're being truthful. Their nose itched so they did it this way. But that's just as phony and just as worthless as the opposite way."
"And just as mannered," added Claire.
A few weeks earlier a well-known actress was fired from a New York play before it opened. The producer and the director said her devotion to the Method was sabotaging the production. The producer said, "Lee Strasberg will have a lot to anser for on the Day of Judgement." Does too much emotion on the stage get in the way of good acting?
"I can't see that it could if you know how to control it and produce it," said Claire. Does an actor have to feel emotion in order for the audience to feel it? "You camn well hope you can feel it," said Claire, "But not every night. IF you're unfortunate enough to be in a successful play, I don't believe it's possible to feel on the same level eight times a week. It isn't that you ration yourself and say 'Well, tonight I won't' or 'Tonight I will.' You are only a human being. I played A Streetcar Named Desire in London for eight months. I would say that in that particular play, it almost always took you along with it, but the net result was that for a year aft it, I was not very well, and I'm not so sure that this is a sensible way to do it. That play is notorious for doing that to the actress who plays Blanche.
"The horrible evenings for me are when you actually don't feel, and you feel that you're somehow feeling the audience in some cheap way. The fact is after those performances, people would rush around and say you were never better, at which point you tear your hair out. It isn't the magic of the theater, but there is something intangible. You can't grasp it. You can't reach it. You can only do it."
Can an actor objectively judge her performance? "You obviously can't," said Claire. "All I can say is the only way I can judge it is to say that I myself was not satisfied. But I cannot judge the effect on an audience. I think I can, but then, something like that happens.and people say 'That's the best performance you've ever given,' and you yourself felt extremely hollow. I can't give any reason for it. I simply don't know why it should be."
Claire has had a long and successful association with Shakespeare's women. Her Juliet with the Old Vic was so successful it saved the theater from bankruptcy in its early days. At the time of our session, Claire had been performing a reading that was a portrait of some of Shakespeare's female characters. What relevance do Viola, Juliet, Desdemona, and Portia, Brutus's wife, have for us today? "They are great women," said Claire. "There's a great story to be told. They speak to us. As far as I am concerned they speak to me as if they wre women today. I think many peole who hear them feel the same way. That's the only way to approach the parts, as though they were written about us, about people we know or about yourself. I don't know about relevance. That's when pme starts to talk about political things or moral things, which are not my balliwick."
Those particular women have their strength in common. For example, Viola is shipwrecked but in the end it's her strong will that rescues her. Juliet is a difficult child because she is so obstinate. Desdemona is independent enough to marry against the will of her father. And Portia says to her husband, "I am the equal o fyou. I am your wife, the daughter of a great man. Do you think I am not strong with such a husband and such a father?" Then she stabs herself in the leg to demonstrate her strength. Were these women chosen because of their strong-willed nature?
"I chose them for no other reason than that they appeal to me," said Claire. "I was drawn to those particular characters. Not to prove a point, but simply because their spirit and energy and guts attract me. But I also find poor Ophelia just as equally touching and moving. You can't perform her in a one-woman show because there isn't enough there. She's far from strong, poor girl. She goes under. Yes, the parts seem to me to form a kind of cohesive group. I wasn't trying to make a statement, but from a performer's point of view, they are gutsy, strong vibrant women."
When Claire performs her evening of Shakespeare's wome, she is alone on stage. I asked her how she dealt with the absence of other actors. "They are all there," said Claire with a dark and penetrating gaze. "I imagine them. One thing we haven't mentioned is that to be an actor you have to have a very strong imagination. Most of us have probably had that since we were children, and we've channeled it into this lets-pretend-world, which we then take as completely real. So they're there for me. I've kept that alive. I'm acting with people who are not there but who are there.
Is a solo performance the same for an actor as ensemble work? "It's a different affair," said Claire. "I do enjoy it when there's a terrifici audience that you can actually play with. Most of the time it's been that. But it's different. It's something else. I wanted something in my pocket that I could do by myself, because I find that an actor's life, waiting for the phone to ring, is just infantilizing in the end. Some of us feel we have to take our lives into our own hands because the waiting is too damn passive, and if you're not a passive person it's very destructive.
Many of England's best-known actors have made their reputations playing kings and queens and lords and ladies in Shakespeare's plays. They they, in turn, have been knighted. In the film Richard III, Claire worked with five theatrical knights: Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Sir William Walton, the composer. She has also worked with many others in a number of productions. When there is a royalty created among actors does that create a rift with colleagues?
"No," said Claire. "It's a bit of a lark, that's all." Could it be compared to winning an award in this country? "I don't think that means much either," said Claire. "It is like winning an award, or being the honored artist of the Soviet Republic, or whatever they hand out in each country."
Thater is a collaborative affair. The playwright writes the script, and then the actors and the director become part of the creative team. How does an actor make his contribution to the conception of a role?
"That's what rehearsals are for," said Claire. "That's what those wonderful four weeks are. That's why most actors enjoy them more than they enjoy performing. That's when you do it."
"The director has to create an atmosphere that's creative," added Kevin. "What I can't stand is directors who come and have no opinion. They just sit thee and say banal kinds of things. They should have an opinion about how the play should go, and then let the actors have their head so they can explore. Eventually they have ot make decisions and say,
'Well, it was a nice try, but I don't like that choice. I like the other choice better.'"
"Basically one relies on them for first-rate criticism," said Claire. "In my case, because I have done so much classic stuff (for lack of a better word), you can't just keep grinding out the same old play. One hopes that the director will have some new and fresh conception of the play, which you agree with before you agree to work with this director. It may well be that he'll tell you Hamlet takes place in the subway, and you'll say 'Well, get another fella.' But basically you want him or her to have to have an overall interesting conception of the play, to discuss it with you, to discuss it with the other actors, and then to come with an open acceptance of what each actor will bring. The wonderful thing that one prays for [is] someone sitting there who you know is a first rate critical mind, so that if she says, 'I don't like your choice,' you say, 'Okay,' instead of thinking, 'Oh, she doesn't know.' Then you're left in this amorphous state of not knowing who's in control or who to rely on."
"The first priority of the director is the play," said Kevin. "The director has to have a concept of the play, an idea of the set, and then [he has to] make sure that the actors are fulfilling a particular vision. The director has to have a clear idea of the entire play. Then eac actor's individual contribution will hopefully meld together into a realization of that overall concept, which the actors will feel very comfortable doing."
"The truth is that one prays for that kind of director," said Claire, "but rarely finds it. At leaset, that's my experience."
Kevin said, "The director I enjoyed working with the most was Alan Schneider. Alan and I did four plays together. A lot of actors didn't get along with Alan because he was very tough and all he cared about was the play. His major assumption was that if he hired you, you knew what to do. You knew how to act. He didn't want to teach you how to act. So I find myself without even knowing it, behaving as a director the way Alan used to, which is to sit there and give notes and get up there He'd lean like nose to nose with you, and give you the note, and then as soon as he gave you the note, he'd rip off the page and throw it over his shoulder and he'd move on. We used to have a guy who'd follow him with a wastebasket and Alan would throw his notes and the guy would catch tehm as they went flying."
"He was a damn good director," said Claire, "I'd love to have worked with him. And that kind of passionate involvement is what one wants. It's wonderful when it happens."
Does an actor have the opportunity to come up wiith more of his own choices in Shakespeare because of the lack of stage direction? "I've only done one Shakespearean play in my whole life," said Kevin, "which I guess tells you something about me and the American theater." "More about the American theater," said Claire.
"It was just one of those things," explained Kevin. "I started to film and then finally a couple of years ago, Joe Papp gave me a chance to do King John. Jt turned out pretty good. I didn't pay much attention to the stage directions, whatever they were. I didn't pay much attention to the verse either. Once I got it emotionally right, the verse seemed to take care of itself. I feel kind of silly saying this with Claire here." "I'm sure it's perfectly true," said Claire.
Kevin continued, "I didn't realize the kick, the joy you get. Instead of saying," (he coarsely poked the air) "'Now take off! Get outta here and take the message and come on back?' "Instead of saying that, he says (I hope I don't butcher it), 'Set wings to the thy heels.'" Kevin's voice took on a lyric power, deliberate and yet filled with urgency. "'Be Mercury, set teachers to thy heels and fly like thought from them to me again.' When you start dealing with that, there really isn't any other way. You get into it. That's what Shakespeare's all about, isn't it? It was just such a fantastic experience to do that, and I think it's great that there aren't all those stage direcctions because that's what's kept if so fresh."
"Also, does one really take a lot of notice of stage directions?" asked Claire. "Ibsen, for example, is very clear and precise. If you're in trouble n an Ibsen play, and you go back and read the stage directions, you think, 'Oh, that's what the old boy meant!' But there are very few writers whose stage directions you would follow as an actor."
"What's marvelous about Shakespeare is you have a score to sing," said Claire. "It's there for you. I don't mean you should sing it. It's there so that anyone with half a brain can actually pick up this very simple rhythm very, very easily. If you have a problem with a line and it doesn't make sense, sometimes if you bash it out" (she began drumming on the table with her knuckles) "you'll think, 'Oh yes, of course, that's where I must accentuate the word,' and it's actually there for you. That's one of the marvelous things about Shakespeare. When I was a young actress, I hadn't the faintest idea and it's only really since John Barton at the Royal Shakespear Company that people have gone into short lines and long lines and feminine endings. He believes that these props in the score will hold the actor up and I think he's right. He's writtten a wonderful booked called Playing Shakespeare. I found it extremely useful and interesting, although I've come to it very late in life because I never used any of these things myself.
"We took it for granted that for an actor worth his salt, the emotion will tell you how to speak the line. But you've got to have an ear. If you've got a tin ear, nobody can teach you anyway. But now there are certain rules that I tell my audience because they come completely blank. They don't know what they're in for. Alll they know is that they are frightened for some reason of this language. So one says, 'Well these are the rules which you can really learn in half an hour.' No singiner would attempt to sing a part before they's learnt music and before they could read the score. These kids have to be given keys to this and when they have them, they find it very easy. It's the same as any other acting. You're playing a role. You have to make it personal or key it or tie it to something that you know, so that it's a living person that you're playing. And speak as naturally as you can. The verse is there underneath you to hold you up."
Kevin said "Certain movies are really a joy to work on. You can actually do some pretty good work I admire actors who can work in film who have that kind of technique. It's just incredible how [they[ keep it all in their head so that by the end there's something to put together that makes a performance. Physically it's harder to work in the theater. Emotionally, especially if you're an impatient sort, it's harder to work in film, because you just have no control over anything that's going on. You could do your absolutely most brilliant take and somebody somewhere messed up, or the sound wasn't good or something and you gotta do it over. And then you have no control over which take they use! At least in the theater you make a choice and you get out there and you play it and you go, "Ooh, I like this. I'm going to do it again, tomorrow.' But in film you do a few takes, and then six months later the director decides which he or she likes. I've had some pretty grim experiences seeing films that I've been in. Six months later, you sit there and you go, 'How did that happen! Why did he use that?'"
"They both have drawbacks," said Claire. "The thing about the theater is that if you could do only a limited run of three monthws, I think there's the question that for the actor, that's the great pleasure. The sweep of the play you can't compare to anything else. The repitition in the commercial theater is deadly for an actor, and I myself have withdrawn from it. I like the meticulousness of filming exactly as Kevin says- you do a scene the day before yesterday that takes place in three months and [another scene] the day after tomorrow that plan and you have to try to fuild very carefully something that is fragmented and put it together in some kind of a shape. I find that very exciting. The difference betwen Kevin and I is that my television has mainly been done in England. And I enjoy television more than anything because, in a funny way, you get the pleasure of both. It does go much quicker. Generally more in order. And somehow you get the intimacy of film but you do feel in a way that you get almost the sweep of the theater. I've enjoyed television more than anything else that I've done."
I asked Claire if she were to end our evening with a soliloquay, which one she'd choose.
"Well, I would try to think of one to suitably close such a lovely occasion," she said. Then with hands clasped, and in a beautifully modulated voice, she recited:
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

The article is accompanied by a small black and white photo of Claire in "A Doll's House" and Kevin in "Of Mice and Men"