On a bright fall morning in Manhattan, a minor entourage of hair makeup and wardrobe stylists assembles with photographer Len Prince in an intensely lit downtown studio to participatate in a ritual as old as Hollywood- preparing two actresses for their close-ups. Claire Bloom, sixtysomething, is the first to arrive, wearing an understated blue suit and smart black pumps. Her clipped British hello instantly delights the studio's accent-obsessed parrot, who mimics her every syllable. Close on Bloom's heels come Sarah Jessica Parker, twentysomething, in gray sweatpants, a shapeless woolen jersey and scuffed clogs. Scurrying to a nearby trach can, she deposits a huge wad of hot-pink chewing gum.
Today's shoot isn't the actresses' first meeting. They became friends almost two decades ago while starring on stage in Harold Pinter's The Innocents. "Harold said 'Well, there's this wonderful girl in New York. We'll bring her over,'" Bloom recalls. "We became friends. What else can I say, though there is a slight age difference."
Parker and Bloom have certainly had unconventional careers by Hollywood standards. Crisscrossing from stage to screen, Bloom has brought to life an exotic cast of female characters, ranging from the tragically maimed ballerina in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight to Shakespeare's Juliet. She is now tourintg in her own one-woman show, Then Let Men Know, portraying a series of Shakespearean women, and she has a part in Woody Allen's next movie. Parker has chosen equally eclectic roles, including Nicolas Cage's sassy, long-suffering girlfriend in Honeymoon in Las Vegas and, more recently, Johny Depp's embattled love interest in Ed Wood. In Miami Rhapsody, just out, she carries the film with a deft comic performance as a young bride-to-be unwittingly ensnared by her family's infidelities. This spring she will have the title role in A.R. Gurney's Sylvia, a play about a stray dog, at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Both actresses have willingly switched from stage to screen and turned down movies that went on to do "major box-office."
Like Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond, though, both are consummate professionals when it comes to having a picture taken. In a makeup chamber adjacent to the main studio, more than two hours of buffing, coiffing, primping and polishing are about to commence. Amidst the elaborate hair and face sessions, Parker and Bloom talk about surviving the image-making machinery of Broadway and Hollywood with a sense of humor as well as self.
Giselle Benatar: Neither of you has chosen to become a traditional movie star. Were you ever tempted to be a Sharon Stone type?
Claire Bloom: There are several paths one can take, but not every path is open to you. We don't all have bodies like Sharon Stone's- or that tremendous sex appeal. That's kind of a God-given blessing or a curse. Obviously she has it and she uses it very well. I didn't have those possibilities. You can't pretend to be a Sharon Stone or a Marilyn Monroe. You really can't fake that.
Sarah Jessica Parker: Are you saying you couldn't have been a sex symbol? I would have thought that simply wasn't what you chose for yourself.
Bloom: It wasn't what I chose, nor would it have been an option.
Parker: For me, it was always really important that the people I respected, respected my choices. People often say, 'Why do you choose to do the theater when you could do X, Y or Z? In all candor, theater is really what I love to do. I also think that until recently I wasn't thought of as attractive in a way Hollywood wanted either.
Bloom: What changed yor career? Because you've retained your uniqueness and yet you have entered into the mainstream in a way that I was never able to do.
Parker: That's because no one else was available. [She laughs.] I think L.A. Story was primarily responsible for that change. Steve Martin saw something in me that no one else had seen. Once somebody in a film suggests that you are sexual in some way, then all of the sudden everybody goes, 'Oh, she is acceptable in that way.' It's the power of suggestion.
Benatar: Blame it on the power of suggestion or destiny- but you've also shaped your own careers. What's your approach to choosing roles.
Parker: I fell I do have to be prudent. I passed on things last year that have been hugely successful. But there are certain choices I just don't have the stomach for. If I found myself on Airplane! with a gun to my head having to scream for two hours I'd probably kill myself.
Bloom: I'm at a very different age. I'm no longer building my career as Sarah Jessica is. I've got it. And they can't take it away from me. So film is different for me now. If the money is good and it's not totally revolting, I'll do it. So I might well, if I was asked by the devil to may a pact, say, 'Let's do it.'
Benatar: As an actress, you have to consider how your body- as well as your talent- is used on screen. How do you control that?
Parker: I honestly couldn't care less about my body. I'm really not proud of how I look. Having said that, I will not do a nude scene. And you couldn't pay me enough to have someone pretend they were me doing a nude scene.
Bloom: You can't stop them using a double, can you?
Parker: Yes. I did it. It wasn't in my contract to do a nude scene on a particular film and there was no body double allowed. So there was no nude scene.
Bloom: For me it's different. In my day, people didn't do nude scenes. I mean they didn't exist. I do remember having to do one scene in a shower for something, but somebody else did it for me. I was totally aghast. Her body was terrible, and I thought, Well I could have done that myself. But my face has always been my fortune anyway, not my body.
Benatar: Let's move offscreen. Both of your personal lives have been subject to a great deal of press scrutiny- as are most actresses'. How do you protect your privacy?
Parker: It's so interesting because this has been a big issue for me lately. [She glances toward her hovering publicist.] People say I've been generous with details about my personal life, but it's just not true. Interviewers ask whom you've been dating and you spend seven minutes of a four-hour interview trying to be circumspect. And that seven minutes becomes the whole piece. And because I once dated somebody who was certainly better known than I will ever be, all of the sudden that defined me.
Bloom: I felt precisely the same, except it was a different time in my life. When I was in England doing Romeo and Juliet as a child star, I was interviewed by the British press, who are even more vicious and cruel than the Americans. So I have been extremely guarded ever since. I have no intention of discussing my private life with anyone.
Benatar: But there are actresses who thrive on exploiting their private lives. What do you think of Madonna's approach to self-revelation?
Bloom: I saw one of her video cllips yesterday and I was absolutely mesmerized. It was so manipulative and clever. And she was kosher to the whole thing.
Benatar: One positive influence Madonna and other women have had on Hollywood recently is that they have increased women's financial clout there. How do you control the role money plays in your lives?
Parker: The important thing for me isn't being able to say I made forty million dollars at the back end and a big distribution deal and a flip-flop or whatever. I want to be able to say no to work. The thing that's worth attaining- and the power I think people are so afraid of women's having- is the ability to say yes or no.
Bloom: Money is important to me in just the way Sarah Jessica says. I started on a very high note and I was alwasy able to choose. I want to be able to do that until my last breath. And to do that, you have to have money.
Parker: There is still a discrepency in earning power between men and women in Hollywood. And it becomes doubly unfair when you think of our earning potential in terms of years. Actresses are like football players. They have a small window of prime earning ability.
Bloom: And the men go on and on.
Benatar: Since we're on the subject of aging- can a woman keep acting and grow old gracefully in Hollywood?
Bloom: Frankly, I think you do everthing you possibly can to keep looking decent. Whatever is available to you, you do.
Parker: You know what, I kind of like my lines. When I look in the mirror I think, Wow, these are interesting.
Bloom: Yes. I remember seeing some little wrinkles in my early thirties and thinking they were interesting. But you know the horror of it is that the screen image has to be perfect.
Benatar: It does seem difficult for actresses, even the most talented ones, to escape being reduced to that perfect, prefabricated screen personna- that Norma Desmond-like celluloid illusion. How do you work in this image-obsessed industry and avoid that fate.
Bloom: There are women who get through it. Jessica Tandy managed. And Katherine Hepburn. I don't think actresses' lives in general are very good. I admire anyone who has been able to do what so many women are trying to do, which is balance a career and a life.
Parker: Claire, you have a daughter. And I always thought you had such a full life- you have love and literature. I like the fact that Meryl Streep has so many children and that she's married and very private. I like the fact that Sissy Spacek lives on a farm in Virginia and has children. With the actresses I most admire, I find it's less for what they do than how they live.
As the makeup session draws to a close, Bloom and Parker survey their reflections with practice dispassion. In just two hours, both actresses have been transformed. Their faces now have the smooth, unblemished hues of airbrushed studio publicity stills; their hair has been teased, shaped and slicked into glossy crowns; their eyebrows are sharply drawn and their lips provocativley rouged into glamorous fifties style pouts. Satisfied with the makeup artists' work, Len Prince ushers the pair to the main studio where he poses them on adjacent velvet chaises. Their backs are arched, their chins almost touchig. Prince crawls beneath the camera curtain and holds out a commanding hand for stillness and a flawless sense of irony. Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Bloom strike a classic Hollywood pose.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Gisele Benatar writes about culture and politics for a variety of publications.

Photos- Full page black and white photo of Claire Bloom on left in a velvet chaise, looking at camera with half closed eyes, while Sarah Jessica Parker, also in a velvet chaise is in profile looking intently at Claire. Small color photo of Claire and Sarah in same chaises, looking at the camera.