ClAIRE BLOOM'S FACE LOOKS bruised; a black eye and a nasty gash mar her still-radiant beauty. As she Fortunately, the blemishes are just face paint- Bloom, 65, is filming a TV movie in Middlesex England- but as she settles in for a salad and a chat at a local pub, she makes sure her scarf covers the worst of them. "I have always," she says, "been very private."
That is, until now. Her just-published Leaving a Doll's House- a kiss-and-dis autobiography recounting her theatrical triumphs; her affairs with with costars, including Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier; and her ill-fated marriages to actor Rod Steiger, producer Hillard Elkins and novelist Philip Roth- is currently the most buzzed-about celebrity memoir of the season. And her turbulent 18-year relationship with Roth dominates her story. When she isn't praising him for his brilliance, she paints him as spiteful, volcanic, sadistic. "I had a devastatingly dreadful end to what had been in many ways a wonderful marriage and thought it might help me write about it and help other women," she says, explaining her decision to be brutally candid. "Philip always said,'Be private in your life and shameless in your work.'"
And Bloom, her book makes clear, nearly always listened to Philip. The actress and the novelist, who met through mutual friends, began seeing each other in 1975, when she was 44 and he 42. Drawn to Roth's fierce intelligence, Bloom, a renowned stage actress, soon began splitting her time between her home in London and Roth's farmhouse in rural Connecticult. "I loved talking to him about books," she says, "walking in the country with him, having quiet evenings by the fire."
Not long after their affair began, however, Roth decided that Anna Steiger, Bloom's teenage daughter from her first marriage, bored and irritated him, and, in a letter, demanded that Anna move out of Bloom's London home, where Roth lived part-time. Terrified of losing, Bloom complied, sending Anna to a nearby student hostel, a decision she rues yet defends. "I don't think Philip will ever understand what a monstrous episode that was," she says. "Many girls of 18 have left home, but Anna was wounded already, and this was very difficult."
Roth, as Bloom tells it, became more impossible as he battled depression along with other illnesses during the ensuing years. In his novel Deception, Roth introduced a writer named Philip who has affairs to relieve the tedium of his relationship with a middle-aged "Claire." (After the real Claire threatened to sue, he changed the character's name.) When Bloom- remarkably, still determined to preserve their relationship- proposed marriage in 1990, Roth presented her with a draconian prenuptial agreement that assured she would receive nothing if they divorced. Against her better judgement, she signed. "I wanted to be his wife more than anything," she writes, "enough to turn my face away from this blow to my pride."
Then, during a mental breakdown for which he was hospitalized in 1993, Roth sued her for divorce, claiming cruel and inhuman treatment. When Bloom negociated a $100,000 settlement, he faxed her a bill for $62 billion, one billion for each year of her life. Only later did Bloom learn the real reason for the divorce: Roth left her for another woman.
"I've had moments of enormous anger, but I just feel deep sadness now. And a great, great sense of loss," says Bloom, who seems surprised when asked why she stayed so long. "He was a wonderful man, and I loved him." Explains a friend, Vita Muir, who watched the debacle: "Claireis a person who will sleep on the floor and give you the bed. She is a magnet to the kind of man who will take advantage of her."
Bloom's strong yearning for "a protective male presence," as she describes it, dates from her childhood. She grew up mostly in England, changing schools and homes often. Her father was an itinerant salesman and gambler. "He had wit and charm, and I loved him very much," Bloom says, "but he was unreliable." She and her younger brother John (now 60 and a film editor) were closer to their mother, who encouraged her daughter's early interest in the stage. By 14, Bloom had dropped out of school to pursue acting. At 20, Charlie Chaplin cast her in his film Limelight, but she was back doing Shakespeare at London's Old Vic Theatre when she took up with the first of her bad boys. Richard Burton, then 27 and married to his first wife, Sybil, "was brilliant, unspoiled and pure," says Bloom, who lost her virginity to her frequent costar at 22. By the time their romance finally ended- when she caught him in a clinch with actress Susan Strasberg- he had become "simply a womanizer," she says. "He went from a naive young boy from Wales to a rather practiced seducer."
Bloom herself was hardly staying chaste. She had brief dalliances with both Olivier (who had "a kind of false charm," she writes) and Yul Brynner ("he was just fun, quite honestly") before marrying Steiger (her Rashomon costar on Broadway) after learning she was pregnant in 1959. "We didn't have a great deal in common except affection, and that's not enough," says Bloom. In 1969, Hillard Elkins, a flamboyant producer and Steiger friend, lured her away from the marriage, but that union failed after nearly five years. "The unmentionable," as Bloom now calls Elkins, left her, in 1974, for another producer's wife. "I was looking for love in the wrong places," says Bloom, "until I met Philip."
To this day, Bloom believe Roth was worth the pain. "I thought I'd found the ideal father, lover, husband- and I had, for a long time," she says. The two are no longer in touch, and Roth hasn't commented publicly on her book. "I could not have gotten through all this without my family, my sister-in-law, my brother, my daughter," says Bloom. "It was just too hard. Sometimes I was shaking and zombie-like and Valiumed out of my mind to keep calm, but I never missed a day's work and that's quite an accomplishment."
Today, Bloom divides here time between a small apartment in Manhattan and her daughter's London home. Anna, now 36 and an opera singer, "will always feel I let her down in certain ways," says Bloom, but "we are still pretty close." Though she received "a very good advance" for her book, Bloom has worked almost constantly during the past three years, even taking a temporary role on As the World Turns to support herself. And, at the moment, she is not involved in a romance. "I don't have much of a personal life," she admits. "I'm rather lonely. It would be very nice to have a companion." Would she choose more wisely next time? Bloom's laugh is hearty. "I bloody well hope so," she says, summoning a quote from King Lear: "Thou shouldst not have been old 'til thou hadst been wise."
.KIM HUBBARD
.NINA BIDDLE in London

Photos accompanying the article: 1. Two thirds page color of Claire reclining in a wicker chair holding book on her lap- "Writing my book kept me bubbling,: says Bloom (on a TV-movie set in England). "I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself." 2. Tenth page black and white photo of Claire, holding teacup and saucer, and Philip Roth- "I miss the life we had," says Bloom of her marriage to Roth (in London, 1990). 3. Fifth page black and white of Claire and Richard Burton seated at a diner booth- "We had a youthful, passionate kind of relationship," says Bloom of Richard Burton (on a break from 1959's Look Back in Anger). 4. Fifth page black and white of Claire and first husband Rod Steiger and daughter Anne- "He offered me...the tenderness and protection I so badly needed," writes Bloom of Rod Steiger (with their daughter Anna in 1963). 5. Fifteenth page black and white of Claire and second husband Hillard Elkins- "My feelings for Claire are warm," says second husband Hillard Elkins (in '69). "I've had my turn being shot down by her, now Philip's had his." 6. Fifteenth page black and white of Claire being kissed on the cheek by her mother- "I feel her loss dreadfully," says Bloom of her mother (with her at the Old Vic opening of Romeo and Juliet, 1952) who died in the late '70's. "I still feel it today." 7. Two fifths page color of Claire and daughter Anne- "Philip's relationship with my daughter was dreadful," says Bloom (with Anna in London, 1980). "I regret that she was caused such pain."